


Keith & Katie vs. the Universe

by luoup (ravenic)



Series: Team Arms (Keith & Katie 'verse) [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Gen, Platonic Relationships, keith and pidge knew each other AU, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2018-12-10 23:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11701662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenic/pseuds/luoup
Summary: Keith and Katie - Pidge - have Shiro back.  But now they're in space, and aliens are real, and Team Voltron is really just a bunch of teenagers fighting in an intergalactic war.Lucky for Voltron, Team Arms has got this.  Mostly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and heeeeeere we are: the night before s3, and i finally post the start of the sequel to [K&Kvs.tW](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9917906)!! (losing my mind holy heck i have hardly ever been so excited for a new season of anything ever)
> 
> i'm still not quite 100% on the structure of this thing, it might be one long work or i might break it into a few pieces within a series. dunno yet. i'm also struggling a little with how to manage that i'm writing alongside canon; i'll probably focus on in-between bits, things that involve Team Arms, and parts that would be significant/altered if keith and pidge had known each other from before voltron. bleh. this is hard. 
> 
> (i esp struggled with this chapter, it's essentially weird blurry prologue/the five seconds everyone's together on earth before it is Space Time(TM). then the real stuff gets going)
> 
> on that note, here we go! we're leaving earth behind, it's keith and katie vs the universe now!

Shiro.  Shiro was back.  They had found him and he was back, alive and breathing, albeit totally unconscious.  He lay on Keith’s bed in the shack, sleeping off whatever drugs the Garrison had pumped him full of before Keith had knocked them all out. 

Keith had almost passed out too.  He’d looked at that table, at the person strapped down to it, and the recognition had hit him as hard as any punch.  Something was – wrong – with the right arm, and there was a terrible scar on the face, dragging across the cheeks and over the nose, and the hair had gone white in the front, but. 

But it was still Shiro. 

And then, of course, Pidge and the infamous teammate tagalongs had crashed in, and there had been a high-speed hoverbike chase and far too many near-crashes. 

 _Shut up and trust me._   Pidge trusted him.  Of course, Keith’s flying style didn’t quite lend itself to carrying five people on a max-three hoverbike, but details.  Pidge trusted him enough not to ask any questions, not to push for information or stay at the crash site, even though only one of the three people they were looking for had returned. 

Pidge trusted him not to say anything about who he really was, even as Keith stood there and watched Pidge look at Shiro with Katie’s eyes.  Keith Kogane didn’t know Pidge Gunderson, so he didn’t look at the other, didn’t say or do anything at all.  He didn’t quite trust himself, especially beside these two who had followed Pidge, who knew nothing about Kerberos or Shiro or the Holts or Katie or anything. 

It turned out that Shiro didn’t either.  He looked right at Pidge – at Katie, hair chopped short with her brother’s glasses instead of her own contacts, looking like the spitting image of Matt, and… nothing.  That _“I’m Pidge”_ had been the most painful thing Keith had ever heard.  Katie had looked her brother’s best friend in the eye and seen no recognition.  But Katie – Pidge – was nothing if not the world’s greatest liar, so only Keith saw the pain in his eyes as he introduced himself with a name that Shiro would not know.  But Shiro didn’t know Katie, either.  He didn’t know anything, didn’t remember anything.  Keith’s brother had been gone for a year, and he seemed to recall nothing about that time, although with the arm, scar, and hair, it was pretty obvious that it had been nothing good.  What was even more worrying was that Shiro didn’t really seem to remember much of anything else either.  He knew Keith, and that was about it. 

This was what they’d wanted.  This was proof that the Kerberos Mission hadn’t crashed, or failed, or any of the other lies the Garrison had invented to explain the absence of Keith’s brother and two-thirds of Katie’s family.  All the searching, all the sneaking and lying and the expulsion and the undercover, the time alone in the desert and in disguise at the Garrison – it was all worth it.  Shiro was back.  It had to be worth it. 

The shack’s screen door _skreeech_ ed open and then shut again, and Pidge sat down at Keith’s left side.  “Shiro’s still sleeping.  Lance passed out on the couch and Hunk started snoring while he was building something,” the shorter boy said quietly. 

They were alone.  “I still can’t believe it,” Keith murmured.  “That’s really Shiro, lying on my bed.  He’s back.”

Pidge almost smiled.  “Yeah.  He is.”

Keith turned to face him.  “We’re getting them back too.  Shiro will remember something.  He’ll know where Matt is, where your dad is.  He can help.  It’ll be easier to find them, now that we have Shiro.  We aren’t done yet.”

Pidge leaned against his arm a little.  “I know,” he said quietly.  “I know.” He stared out at the desert, flicker-flashes of relief and renewed loss blurring across his face. 

“We weren’t wrong,” Keith said fiercely.  “We knew they weren’t dead, and we were right.  Shiro didn’t crash the ship in space a million miles away.  He’s asleep on my bed.  He’s breathing.  They lied, and now we have proof.  And we’re finding your brother, and your dad.  No one can stop us, not now, not ever.”

“They never could,” Pidge said, and Keith felt a surge of relief at the spark he saw renewed in Pidge’s eyes.  Nothing had ever stopped Katie Holt before, and Keith was pretty sure Pidge Gunderson was just as determined. 

They were still together, and they had Shiro back.  Matt and Sam would be found soon.  They had to be. 

* * *

Sunrise came, as it always did in the desert, far too early.  It was also possibly the most awkward morning Keith had ever experienced. 

For one, his brother was wandering around the shack like a lost puppy.  Shiro seemed to still be in a bit of shock – completely understandably so, honestly – and spent most of the morning going back and forth from the kitchen area to the living room area, one way and then the other like he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing.  Lance and Hunk watched him, back and forth like a tennis ball, while Hunk worked on something that Keith was pretty sure involved parts of his microwave and maybe one of the stove dials. 

Also.  Pidge was there, and he was working just as hard as Keith was to _not_ act like they knew each other.  For all their video calls back and forth, Pidge hadn’t been to the shack very often so that part was almost true.  But it had been nearly a year, and they had the closeness that came from shared secrets and bonded determination, strengthened by a hatred of the Garrison and its lies that was only intensified by their relationship.  _Righteous indignation_ , or something like it. 

Pidge was a good actor.  He had to be.  Pidge was made for secrets.  Lance and Hunk had been practically living with him for months and didn’t seem to suspect anything.  But Keith – Keith was very bad at people, and he wasn’t exactly a secret-keeping expert.  For the most part he just told it like it was (not that that had ever earned him any favors), and generally simply tried to avoid people, which at least spared him from being stuck with the truth or trying to lie.  But he couldn’t just leave his own house, and while at least he could be honest about his relationship with Shiro, it was very hard to stand there and act like he’d never seen Pidge in his life. 

Fortunately, none of them were very good at sitting still, and before the sun was high the five were in the desert canyons, following the signals from Hunk’s contraption.  It was a little weird.  Keith had only ever been down here alone, or a handful of times with Pidge, aimlessly tracking back and forth as the singing came and went, never quite with a direction or clear purpose.  Shiro was quiet, but Keith couldn’t even worry about him properly because Lance apparently _never shut up_ , and Pidge wasn’t backing him up because they _didn’t know each_ other.  Also, Pidge was completely lost with Hunk, nerding out over whatever nerd thing Hunk had built with Keith’s microwave’s guts.  He really hoped the mechanic could fix it when they went back, Keith kind of needed it.  The stove too. 

Hunk’s thing worked surprisingly well, though, and soon they were through and to the pictograms, and before Keith could quite explain that they signified something important about this day in time, Lance touched something and then they were all falling. 

A lion.  A giant robot lion spaceship. 

(A lion that had sung to him for months, drawing him out into the desert under the stars but never quite letting him in.  Keith wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but now was not the time to split hairs.)

Lance, it turned out, was the _worst_ pilot.  Keith doubted this lion ship thing’s judgement, just a little.  There was a lot of yelling and Shiro looked like he might pass out for a bit, and then they were passing Kerberos.  Just a little rock drifting in the void, a moon of a tiny planet billions of miles away from Earth.  Insignificant. 

So significant. 

Fortunately, Shiro’s memory did seem to be coming back, in pieces at least.  Unfortunately, aliens were a thing.  And they were not friendly.  Dodging angry alien laser fire in a giant robot cat spaceship was not something Keith had ever expected to do, but weird things happened in space, it seemed. 

Then the wormhole.  Keith was sure Pidge was absolutely geeking out, somewhere beneath the confusion and wonder and faint traces of terror.  He just wanted to know where it went. 

This was something he’d been made to do.  They were meant for this. 

The Blue Lion passed through the wormhole. 

* * *

For all the theories and cryptobiology and exoplanet science and sci-fi nonsense, they really weren’t prepared for the aliens. 

Well.  First things first.  They weren’t prepared for a newly-returned Shiro, plus some white hair and minus most of an arm (and most of his memories?  That was also concerning), they weren’t prepared for the giant robot Lion, they weren’t prepared for the wormhole, they weren’t prepared for the strange planet, and they _definitely_ weren’t prepared for the aliens. 

The giant robot cat spaceship (?!?!) had come out of the wormhole in a solar system with stars in no constellations Pidge recognized and landed on a planet he had never seen an image of, not even from the most advanced telescopes or the farthest-ranging rovers.  The gigantic alien castle – or at least, that was what Pidge was pretty sure it was – was also unexpected, or at least as unexpected as anything could be at this point. 

The identity scan had been _very_ concerning.  Pidge had held stock-still and hoped to Sagan that it wouldn’t say anything, hyperaware of Keith’s eyes burning on him from a few steps away, but nothing came up.  The castle let them in. 

Princess Allura was… something.  Lance, of course, made a fool of himself within the first thirty seconds, but at least she was less hostile than the Galra in the ship before the wormhole.  “Fire on sight” was not a great introductory method, Pidge thought.  The princess’s… advisor? – the orange one – was very enthusiastic, to put it lightly.  That they were the last of their species was a thought to consider later, when they weren’t having new information thrown at them at the speed of light.  And boy was there a lot of information. 

The radio waves had been right.  “Voltron” was real.  It was the most powerful weapon in the universe, and the blue robot lion spaceship was a part of it.  Pidge couldn’t help but think how odd it was that the Blue Lion had waited for months while he and Keith wandered in circles just outside and only let them in when Lance arrived, but the discovery of more Lions made it make sense. 

The Red Lion.  Instinct, impulse.  Fierce.  An Arm.  That was Keith to the core.  Too bad it was in the possession of the unfriendly category of aliens. 

The Green Lion.  Intelligence, wit and stealth.  Another arm, but a dagger instead of a sword, a shield instead of a fist.  Pidge liked the idea.  The Lion ship was hidden away, the only one the Galra never found in ten thousand years of searching.  Pidge felt a spark of pride for the robot. 

The Blue Lion had brought them here, and Black Lion had been in the castle from the beginning.  Lance was to take Hunk in the Blue Lion to where the Yellow Lion was still holding out, and Shiro would take Pidge to the Green Lion’s location. 

Pidge felt prickles of excitement at finding his own Lion ship, and a stomach-twisting mix of joy and anxiety at being alone with Shiro.  He knew the older, but Shiro didn’t know him.  Or at least, didn’t remember him.  Technically Shiro didn’t know Pidge Gunderson at all, but they had spent enough time together that he should have recognized Katie Holt even with all her hair cut off.  _He knew Keith, but not me._   It was the first time Pidge wished that his disguise hadn’t worked so well.  Amnesia or not, Shiro was even less likely to remember Katie Holt if Katie Holt wasn’t currently _Katie Holt._  

Keith was very much _not_ into the idea of letting his two most treasured people go off on their own, especially when he’d only just gotten one of them back, but there was no way for him to come.  The tiny pod they were taking to the planet only carried two.  Keith’s Lion was waiting on a Galra ship, he had to wait here for the others to get theirs first. 

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Pidge murmured as the two watched Shiro test out the controls of the spacepod.  They were still pretending they didn’t know each other, after all.  Keith could be worried about his brother, but expressing extra interest in the tiny communications officer he’d never met would be strange. 

He couldn’t bring himself to care.  “You too,” Keith whispered back.  “Stay safe.  Come back.”

“I promise,” Pidge said, and Keith watched the pod seal and take off, trying not to think about how Shiro had promised to come back, too. 

It had just taken him a year to do it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bluck bluck bluck. weird timing, weird wording, weird everything. i am tired and not particularly coherent at this point, and am prob gonna do some serious editing to this chapter once i remember how to write this series-style. hopefully it'll get easier in future chapters. 
> 
> (haha holy hell the pronouns are a mess in this chapter. also, it would have been so brain-bending for keith to pretend not to know pidge. this was a weird, weird chapter to write)
> 
> TEAM ARMS IS BACK!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello
> 
> i am not dead
> 
> many things have happened since that month-and-a-bit when i posted the first chapter of this adventure. i have now moved to finland and settled in, and am losing my shit over s4's drop tomorrow. so here's another chapter of keith & katie because apparently pre-season panic is what makes me write. 
> 
> this is actually about half of the planned chapter 2, because the latter half is unedited and i am so tired i'm ready to pass out. might add the rest of the chapter tomorrow (after sleeping a lot and probably watching s4 twice in a row), but for now here's a hopefully-acceptable bit and i'll see what happens when i have a functioning brain again. 
> 
> happy season 4!
> 
>  
> 
> EDIT: i finally slept enough (and saw s4!) and got the rest of this chapter cleared up. so here is the updated, completed version of ch 2, enjoy!

Keith spent the time the others were away retrieving their Lions pacing anxiously.  He didn’t know Lance or Hunk (although Lance said he knew Keith?) but he still didn’t want them to get hurt, as much as the two irritated him (Lance especially). 

But… he’d only just gotten Shiro back and now his brother was gone again, vanished into space in a tiny travel pod.  And he’d taken Pidge with him.  The two people Keith cared about most in the entire world – in the entire universe – had gone away, leaving Keith to pace from one side of the bridge to the other, back and forth like a caged tiger, worrying. 

Keith didn’t do worry well.  He was too short-tempered, too active and not introspective enough.  He needed to _do_ things, not just sit and wait.  Shiro had probably never seen that kind of space pod, how was he going to fly it all the way to the planet Princess Allura said Pidge’s Lion was on?  And Pidge wasn’t even a pilot – he couldn’t help.  They could get lost in dead space, they could get attacked by more Galra, they could crash on the Green Lion’s planet or on another, they could get hit by a random comet, they could –

No, stop.  Keith forced himself to take a deep breath and let it out slowly.  Shiro had survived lost in space on his own for a year, he could fly a tiny, fully-functional space pod to a pre-marked planet.  Pidge wasn’t a pilot, but he was good at technology and would certainly be helpful.  He’d been around Keith long enough to probably pick up the basics besides – Pidge was an alarmingly fast learner.  They would be fine. 

It still didn’t mean that Keith was happy being here alone, watching the stars and feeling like he was back where he started. 

* * *

_“Go.  Be great.”_  

Pidge knew that Shiro was just repeating words of motivation from his commander.  He knew that Pidge was nervous and was giving him encouragement.  It was obvious that many of the pilot’s memories were missing or damaged – the extent was not yet clear, but it wasn’t good – and despite the fact that Pidge was the spitting image of Shiro’s best friend, he seemed to notice nothing. 

So here they were in a canoe being directed by the most alarming sloth in the universe (at least he was a nice guy), Pidge was anxious and wordbabbling, and Shiro calmed him with words from his own father.  Sure, it was a nice sentiment from anyone, and maybe it would have helped regardless who the words had come from, but Pidge had grown up his whole life hearing that.  Sam loved his children and encouraged them in any venture they expressed interest in.  Whatever they wanted to do, he was behind them all the way.  All he wanted was for them to succeed and enjoy what they were doing. 

_Go.  Be great._  

Shiro was behind him.  Maybe he didn’t remember, but Pidge did.  .  Pidge’s father was somewhere, alive and loving him, waiting for him to find his family. 

Pidge could do this. 

_Watch me, Dad.  I’m going to be the greatest this universe has ever seen._

* * *

Keith nearly collapsed when he looked out the viewport and saw the Green Lion approaching the castle, emerging from the darkness and distant stars like a promise, growing bigger and stronger as he watched. 

_See?_   he heard Pidge’s voice say, almost teasing.  _I told you we’d come back._  

Pidge wouldn’t leave him.  And now, neither would Shiro.  Never again. 

Fortunately, he didn’t have to try too hard to hide his relief.  Allura was also clearly glad that all the Paladins had made it back, and everyone knew that Shiro was important to Keith (although they maybe didn’t know about the brother thing).  It might have been harder for him to hide his emotions about Pidge, since they weren’t supposed to know each other or really care much about each other at all, especially not when compared to Lance and Hunk.  That was exactly what made it easy: Lance practically lost it as soon as the two new Legs made it out of their Lions. 

“Hunkohmygod,” Lance said in a blur, barreling into his friend and starfishing himself around him.  Hunk held him with an ease that spoke of much practice.  “I thought you were going to die when that cave collapsed and all those drones started firing, oh my god I can’t believe we made it, holy _crow_ Hunk–”

Hunk patted Lance’s back reassuringly and waited for him to run out of panic-words.  “I’m okay, Lance.  See?  Yellow’s a good girl.  She protected me.  And now we have four Lions!”

As the Legs calmed each other down and Shiro and Allura started talking about the next steps, Keith had a moment to step closer to Pidge while nobody was looking.  “I’m glad you’re back,” he said quietly. 

Pidge didn’t quite look at him, but he smiled.  “Me too.  It was weird to be out there with Shiro but not you.” The smiled dropped a bit.  “I was getting myself freaked out, especially after being startled by that giant sloth dude–”

_The what?_   That was going to require some questioning later. 

“– and I guess Shiro noticed, and he told me something my dad used to say.  Like, to reassure me, I guess.  I don’t know if it meant anything.  He might have just been repeating motivational phrases from his captain to keep some kid calm.  Or maybe he knew.  Maybe not completely, but… maybe he remembers _something?_ ”  Pidge rubbed at his arms, all of a sudden looking very small.  “I…  I don’t know.  I want him to know, but – I don’t know how.”

There was nothing Keith could do about this.  They had gotten one of their missing people back, but Shiro only recognized Keith and seemed to know nothing about Pidge (he should have, even with the hair and the glasses.  He should have recognized Katie), and Matt and Sam were still missing.  It wasn’t Keith’s fault, but it still gave him some bizarre kind of survivor’s guilt.  Until now, they had been equals, both looking for their brothers and willing to do anything to find them.  Now Keith had Shiro back, battered but alive to stand at his side, and Katie was still on her own, adrift. 

No, not alone.  That was their deal – they weren’t alone.  Not again, not ever.  “Maybe he’ll remember over time.  Maybe when we get Matt and Sam back.  He remembered your dad’s words, right?  The memories are there.  They’ll come back.”

Pidge took in a slow breath and let it out.  “Yeah.  They’ll come back.”

Shiro’s memories.  Pidge’s family.  The universe was big, but Keith and Pidge were determined.  They would get back what had been taken from them. 

* * *

 Of course, the Galra apparently wanted Shiro back too, or at least they had good timing.  Bad timing.  Really, really bad timing. 

“There is a _giant space warship_ up there, and you want us to _stay?”_ Lance’s voice was cracking so much Keith would have laughed any other time. 

Not this time.  “We have giant warships too, if you didn’t notice.  And who knows what they’ll do to this planet, to whoever lives here?  You want us to _leave?_ ”

Hunk looked uncomfortable.  “I mean, I don’t want to just leave them here, but we can’t evacuate a whole planet.  Maybe if we go, they’ll follow us?”  He looked a little sick.  “Or maybe not.  Maybe they’ll just… go away.  Yeah.”

Pidge blew a strand of hair out of his face, shaking his head.  “They won’t.  For all we know, they’ll destroy the planet just for hosting us, even if we go.  And they have Keith’s Lion.  We have to stay, and we have to fight.”

“We have no training and this is crazy.  We need to leave!”

“We need to stay!”

“Go!”

“Stay!”

“Go!”

“St–”

Shiro interrupted them.  “Pidge is right.  The Arusians have no defenses against what the Galra bring.  But Lance, you’re right too.  We aren’t trained.  But the Red Lion is on that ship, and we can’t form Voltron without it.  We’re Paladins of Voltron now.  We have a responsibility to defend, but we can’t put ourselves in a fight if we don’t stand a chance.  Allura knows the most about the Lions and about Zarkon’s empire.  She will make the final decision.”

Keith’s hands tightened into fists.  How could they even _consider_ running?  It didn’t matter that they weren’t trained.  Keith didn’t even have his Lion yet, but he wasn’t going to bolt at the first sight of a Galra ship.  They had taken enough from him, and he wasn’t just going to run and let them do what they wanted with the planet of Arus. 

Pidge’s face read exactly as he felt.  If anybody else here had known Katie Holt (or remembered, in Shiro’s case), they would have known: Pidge did not back down.  He did whatever he needed to get what he wanted, whether it was information on his missing family or protecting a planet he had only just discovered. 

And yeah, maybe some of their determination came from a wish to hurt the Galra.  There was a lot Keith and Pidge had to pay them back for.  They hadn’t been afraid to go against the Garrison back on Earth, they weren’t going to run from the Galra either. 

But the decision belonged to the alien princess.  Keith hoped she made the right choice.  They couldn’t run from their first fight. 

* * *

They were staying.  But even though they could not form Voltron and only three had usable Lions, they would not be unarmed. 

Pidge had to forcefully repress a total nerd-out – the bayards were an incredible concept, and his own was the best thing he’d ever seen.  A taser-dagger-grappling hook – multifunctional and absolutely made for the way Pidge fought, fast and sneaky and all over the map.  The electrified katar was the perfect weapon for the new Green Paladin, and he couldn’t wait to use it. 

Keith watched his bayard transform into a sword and smiled.  It wasn’t his knife – the Red Bayard was longer, with a broader blade and different weight – but it was close enough.  He could use this.  The Arms of Voltron were meant to defend, and he was damn well going to do his job. 

But before Voltron could do anything, it would have to form.  And for that they would need the Red Lion, Keith’s Lion.  The Lion currently in the grasp of the Galra.  The Lion resting in the hold of the warship that was circling Arus like a hungry wolf. 

Lucky for Voltron, the Green Lion had an invisibility cloak. 

While Hunk and Lance took up the attention of the warship, Keith, Pidge, and Shiro made it on board.  Pidge was repressing more nerd-outs the whole time, but they weren’t on Sendak’s ship for more than ten minutes before Shiro… did something.  Something came over him, paralyzing the leader and leaving him pale and shaking. 

“I’ve been here before.”

Pidge and Keith looked at each other.  Shiro hadn’t given many details about his missing year, but one need only look at him to know it had been nothing good.  For Shiro to remember being on a Galra warship was… not good. 

But if he had been here…

“What about the others from the Kerberos Mission?” Pidge tried desperately to keep his voice even, but judging by Keith’s concerned look he wasn’t succeeding.  “Were they here too?  Where are they?”

Shiro shook his head.  “I don’t know.  I don’t remember.  But we can’t lose focus.  We have a mission.  We need to find the Red–”

Pidge interrupted.  He knew he was sounding too sharp, too pained, but he couldn’t help it.  “I’m not leaving until we find the prisoners.  Even if the Kerberos team isn’t there, other captives might know something about them.”  _Someone has to know where they are._  

It was too much, too close.  The secret was burning in him like fire, and he couldn’t hold it in.  Shiro opened his mouth to protest, but Pidge beat him to it.  “Sam and Matt Holt are my father and brother.”

At some point, Pidge had taken off his helmet.  In retrospect that was a good thing – nobody else would hear the confession.  There was only Keith, who already knew and was staring at Pidge with a blur of emotions on his face, and Shiro. 

Shiro.  He was staring at Pidge too.  Looking at his face, looking at _Matt’s_ face.  Pidge’s heart was pounding.  Shiro had to know, now.  He had to look at Pidge and see a Holt, see _Katie_.  He had to remember. 

“Okay.” Shiro’s voice held emotion but not recognition.  “We’ll find the prisoner hold and get anyone there out, see if anybody has information.  Keith, get to the Red Lion.  You can do it.  Remember: patience yields focus.”

_No._   Keith looked as thunderstruck as Pidge felt.  Shiro remembered that phrase, remembered the words he’d said to a young, angry, reckless Keith (not that he wasn’t still those things now).  He knew Keith’s face, knew they were close, could say words that he’d said to Keith and words that Sam Holt had said to Katie.  But at the same time, his memory was lacework, years lost in his mind.  He could look Pidge in the face without a trace of familiarity in his eyes. 

_You know me,_ Pidge wanted to scream.  _You called me “little sister.”_ Look _at me,_ please _._ See _me.  It’s Katie.  I’m Katie._

_I’m wearing his glasses.  You used to steal them if he spent too long studying.  I look like him._

_I still look like me._

_Please._

Pidge could barely breathe.  Keith looked like he wanted to reach out to him, looked like he wanted to do _something_ , anything, but he didn’t.  This wasn’t Keith’s secret to give up.  He would back Pidge as he always had, but until then he would say nothing.  No matter how much it hurt. 

Pidge could say it outright.  He could tell Shiro that he was Katie, that he was the little sister of Shiro’s closest friend, that she’d been looking for him for so long.  But she couldn’t do it.  She couldn’t be Katie, not yet.  Matt was still missing.  Dad was still missing. 

Katie was missing, too. 

* * *

Keith ran through the purple-glowing halls of the alien spaceship.  His breath came fast and hard in his lungs, mind flashing through ideas and scenarios.  There was no time for him to think about how Shiro had looked Pidge in the face with no recognition when the communications officer said the Holt crew was his family.  No time to think about what else might be missing from his brother’s mind.  No time to do anything but run.  He had to find the Red Lion. 

_Patience yields focus._   He wasn’t going to find the Lion like this.  The ship was huge.  Keith closed his eyes.  _Allura says you’re mine.  She says I’m the Red Paladin.  But I can’t be a Paladin without a Lion.  Where are you?_  

A flicker-flash of images, like a camera roll running through his head. 

**_I am here._**  

Keith’s eyes flew open.  

_Holy shit._   That was not his own mind.  That was… that was something else. 

That was the Red Lion. 

He knew where he was going, now.  The sentry patrols hardly slowed him, and before he knew it he was standing in a hangar.  And in the center of the space, taking up an impossible amount of room, was a massive robot spaceship. 

The Red Lion.  His Lion. 

Except it apparently hadn’t gotten the memo. 

“My name is _Keith_!  I’m your _Paladin_!  Pal-a-din!  I – ugh.”  No response. What was he going to do? 

Fight, apparently.  That seemed to be his answer for everything, but it wasn’t like the universe ever gave him much choice.  The drones figured out that the Red Lion wasn’t alone in its hangar, and they came to investigate.  Not that it went very well for them. 

Or for Keith. 

He held on to the podium with a desperation he hadn’t known he possessed, but the laws of physics didn’t care, and one teenager’s grip could never hold against the vacuum of space.  So he fell, and soon there was nothing but the empty void and his own thunderous heartbeat. 

And a Red Lion, flying through the darkness with jaws open wide.  Keith didn’t have time to do anything, think anything, before she was swallowing him whole. 

Red was different from Blue.  Keith and Katie had gone to the desert dozens of times, searching and searching, but she had never revealed herself to them.  She told them she was there, but she didn’t say where, and she didn’t speak in a language they understood.  That distant singing was all Keith and Katie got.  Blue was not for them.  Red was different.  She was _there_ , real and powerful.  She was still a Lion of Voltron, though.  She was like Blue, but different.  Red didn’t sing. 

**_My Paladin,_** said the Red Lion in Keith’s mind.  **_Mine._**  

_My Lion_ , thought Keith, breathing suddenly.  _Mine_. 

 

*

 

And just like that, they had all five Lions.  With the presence of the four body Lions, Black’s barrier came down, and she accepted Shiro in a heartbeat. 

Keith had found and bonded with the Red Lion.  Lance and Hunk, along with the Blue and Yellow Lions, had successfully distracted the Galra ship and gotten back unharmed.  Pidge and Shiro had found and freed prisoners, although Matt and Sam were not among them. 

“I knew it was a long shot,” Pidge said quietly, in a moment when the others weren’t paying attention.  “I just… I wanted them to be there, no matter how unlikely it seemed.”

Keith understood.  “I got thrown out an airlock,” he said.  “I thought the Red Lion had rejected me.  I thought I was going to die.”

Pidge whipped around to stare at him.  After a beat, he said, “No dying,” in a slightly strangled voice.  “Nobody’s dying.”

“Nobody’s dying,” he agreed. 

“That was stupid,” Pidge said, turning back to tap at a little drone.  “Don’t do it again.  And I’ll look at our comm connections later – if you’re going to make a habit of jumping into empty space I’m gonna make sure you can hear us yell at you about it.”

The drone beeped as if in agreement.  Somehow during the prisoner rescue Pidge had gotten ahold of a Galra drone and turned it into a Voltron drone instead.  The little thing glowed green and white now, instead of purple and red, and hummed and followed Pidge like a dog.  They had never even seen this kind of technology before, and already Pidge was taming it and turning it to their side.  Keith would never quite get over how impossibly talented Pidge was.  He wouldn’t want anyone else in the universe to have his back. 

Maybe nobody else knew it, but they were the best pair to be the Arms of Voltron.  They’d known each other for so long, worked together for so long, that when the five Lions took off and morphed impossibly into a giant robot warrior, the Arms already knew what they were doing. 

Against these five, against Keith and Pidge and their determination to protect, the Galra didn’t stand a chance.  It felt like no time at all before Sendak’s ship was bursting into flames, and Voltron was already turning back to the castle as the pieces fell to Arus. 

They had only been Voltron for a day.  The connections weren’t there yet, not really.  This kind of teamwork would take a long time to master, especially between five people who were all so different.  But even after just that first fight, Keith and Pidge knew that this was what they were meant to do.  Fighting, protecting – this was who they were.  The Red and Green roles were perfectly matched for them. 

Voltron was the Defender of the Universe.  The title couldn’t be more accurate. 

They had been made for this. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mmm still trying to work out the style of this thing. there may unfortunately be a bit of a deadspace for a while now while i work out what the heck i'm doing with this fic and try to get things outlined and pre-written (something i am Not Good At). also probably some editing because stars know this fic needs it. thank you for reading, and for your patience! 
> 
>  
> 
> i can also be found on [tumblr](http://luoup.tumblr.com)!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> um. hello.  
> i have no excuses. i just didn't write this fic for almost an entire year. i am sorry. 
> 
> BUT!!! good news! i have now kicked myself into action (with no small amount of help and communal screaming with j), and i have an Official Luoup Announcement to make: 
> 
>  
> 
> **KEITH & KATIE VS. THE UNIVERSE WILL BE UPDATING WEEKLY FROM NOW ON**
> 
>  
> 
> there. i said it, in public, on the internet. it's official. barring minor life disasters, i am going to be posting a new chapter of K&KvtU every friday, because we have seven goddamn seasons and i better get going before it's all over and i'm an old little monster who can't write anymore. 
> 
> so. little bitty chapter today, and then we really get going. here's to a functional update schedule, and a lot more keith and katie!

  This was surreal.  There was no other word for it.  Only hours ago, it seemed, Pidge had been undercover at the Garrison, looking for his family the best way he knew how.  Only hours ago, Keith had been sitting alone in his desert shack, wondering if he would ever see his brother again. 

Now they were in space, Earth a million million miles away.  They were Paladins.  Everything had changed.  Matt was still lost to the stars (for now), but Shiro was in the next room over, alive and breathing and _close_ , closer than he’d been for over a year. 

The bedrooms of the castle were strange.  The lights were just a slightly different brightness and shade, set strangely into the walls, the bathrooms foreign, the beds too long and a weird solidity, like memory foam had mated with a mushroom and produced a mattress.  They were on an alien planet. 

Keith had slept on a mattress slightly softer than plywood and almost certainly older than he was for too long to be comfortable on the bed in the Red Paladin suite.  But he knew there would be little resting time now that they had a universe to defend and an evil empire to fight (how more sci-fi could his life even _get?_ ).  Shiro was in the next room and Pidge across the hall, and Keith somehow made himself fall asleep (albeit fully dressed and with his boots on his feet – he wasn’t _that_ relaxed). 

It was undeniably strange – there was no constant rushing sound of the desert wind outside, and Keith found himself listening for coyotes out of sheer habit.  But no matter how weird it all was, a lot had happened and he was tired.  Keith closed his eyes with part of his mind still trying to hear distant barks and howls. 

Pidge wasn’t tired in the slightest.  How could he be?  So much had happened, and not for the first time he found himself wishing Matt was there, just so he could wordbabble at him with sheer excitement.  His brother had always been a good listener, able to translate Katie’s chaos of nerd-blather into something understandable, and respond in kind.  _One down, two to go._   Shiro was… not in the best shape, but all things considered he was alive and that was _way_ better than what the Garrison had tried to convince them of.  Shiro was alive – real, undeniable proof that the Garrison had lied.  Matt and Sam were out there too, somewhere, alive and waiting.  Pidge sure as hell wasn’t going to waste his time _sleeping_ when he could be looking for his family.  So he sat on the floor leaning against the bed, computer open in front of him, and worked.  The universe was big and this new weird alien castle had a totally different system than anything Pidge had ever seen before.  The first thing to do was understand how it all worked, and then figure out how to use it. 

The clocks ticked on without seconds or minutes or hours – just another reminder that _they were not on Earth_ – and Pidge worked, his laptop screen shine reflecting off his brother’s glasses. 

*

_“Protect your teammates, or they won’t be there to protect you.”_

Easy.  Keith and Pidge already had experience working together, they knew they made a good team.  They were both almost violently protective of Shiro, and Pidge had developed a fondness for his Garrison team despite his attempts to stay unattached.  They could do this. 

They definitely couldn’t do this. 

Voltron had been so easy to form, the first time, that they had no idea why they couldn’t do it now.  Coran and Allura said a lot of things about bonding and connections and weird mystical-sounding nonsense, but all Pidge could focus on was that the newly-formed Team Voltron was definitely failing. 

Being in the Lions did nothing but damage metal as they collided over and over without fusing.  So they dropped that. 

They tried a blindfolded fight against some of the castle’s training drones.  The shots they fired wouldn’t cause serious damage, but that didn’t mean the hits didn’t hurt, and Pidge’s side ached as he listened to Keith yell at Hunk with more anger than he should be showing.  Keith wasn’t supposed to care so much about Pidge – they weren’t supposed to know each other – but Pidge was too sore to bother trying to stop him.

The invisible maze went well, at least initially.  It was hilarious to watch how bad Lance and Keith were together – neither one could or would listen to the other, which led to some absolutely avoidable shocks – but Keith and Pidge were almost too good.  After Coran commented on their success, Pidge hissed to Keith during a water break, “We have to mess up more.  Stop following my instructions so well.”

Keith glared back.  “I don’t want to get shocked any more than I have to!  You go in the maze and mess up on purpose if you’re so worried about doing too well.”

“But we _are_ doing too well,” Pidge snapped back.  “No other pairs are as good as we are, not even Lance and Hunk or you and Shiro.  I’m going to start giving incorrect instructions or something, we can’t stand out this much.”

“I hate this,” Keith grumbled as Allura called the Paladins back.  Pidge couldn’t agree more. 

During the blind dive, Keith got overcompetitive, raced with Keith, and crashed.  Pidge tried to pull out, but he really wasn’t a pilot and sent his Lion right into a wall instead.  Perfect Shiro did it perfectly.  Of course. 

The mind-meld exercise was nearly a disaster.  The overwhelming amount of fear and blank spots in Shiro’s mind would almost certainly have derailed the attempt, but got beaten by Pidge’s inability to open up.  He literally wasn’t who he said he was – how could he open his mind to the others?  Keith was the only one who knew, as Shiro’s memories of Pidge’s true identity were clearly missing.  He couldn’t do it.  The only image he could hold in his mind was the photograph of himself with Matt, the last picture they’d taken before the _Persephone_ had taken off.  But, of course, that didn’t work either, and the whole mind-meld failed almost instantly after.  Pidge still wasn’t sure whether it was his own feelings about Matt and his family or one of the others – a flash of recognition from Shiro, or guilt from Keith. Regardless of the cause, the connection was broken. 

“Hey,” Keith muttered as he sidled over during yet another water break (Allura was probably just as frustrated as the Paladins were).  “I… I’m sorry for what I said.  I didn’t mean – I know you miss your brother.  I’m just frustrated.  I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

Pidge sighed, leaning back against the wall and wishing he could feel the coolness through his armor.  “I know.  I don’t think I would have been good at that exercise even before, but I definitely can’t do it now.  Nice save, by the way,” he gave the other a half-grin.  “‘Girlfriend,’ that was a good one.  Although now Lance is definitely never going to shut up about it.”

Keith snorted.  “I bet.  I don’t even know where I got that; I’m just glad I didn’t say ‘brother’ out loud, because that would have been a lot to explain right now.”

Pidge was quiet.  For a moment, they watched the others: Shiro drinking water slowly and trying to hide how afraid he was of his own mind (he was good at shielding, but things had seeped out from all of them, and the blankness Shiro held was terrifying even to him), Lance and Hunk leaning on each other, drawing support and comfort from one another in a way that Keith and Pidge, with all their secrets, could not. 

“I guess I really do look like Matt,” Pidge said quietly.  Before Keith could decide what to make of that statement, he cracked a grin.  “More points against the Garrison, then.  Dumbasses couldn’t even recognize a virtual clone of their missing cosmonaut.  Idiots.”

“Idiots,” Keith agreed, and then it was time for the next effort. 

The gladiator bot fight was an absolute failure.  Hunk almost hit Keith instead of the bot and then got electrocuted anyway.  Pidge hit and landed it well, but dropped his defense and got hit right back. 

Lance was actually quite good when he had distance, but once the gladiator got close enough he was done – both disarmed and bowled clean over.  Between the two of them he and Keith might have gotten it, but they were each fighting it on their own instead of together, no teamwork between the two, and neither could beat it alone. 

Shiro did well right up until something switched in his brain and the Black Paladin froze.  Keith lunged and barely blocked the strike, but they both got knocked over in the next strike.  The fight was lost. 

Allura was furious.  As she shouted about how the gladiator’s level had been set for an Altean child, Pidge sulked on the floor, nursing bruises and thinking about how they were all children really, that they weren’t Altean, or warriors.  It didn’t matter how intent they were on fighting and protecting – nothing in their lives had prepared them for this, and they were well and truly out of their league. 

*

Aside from the still-definitely-really-weird-and-maybe-inedible food goo, dinner was fine.  Right up until the handcuffs materialized and the Paladins found themselves bound to one another.  Fortunately Shiro was on one end so he wasn’t completely trapped (Keith had felt the way he’d tensed when the cuffs snapped on – yet another Thing To Worry About Later), but Keith himself was not a fan of having his hands trapped.  None of them really were. 

Shiro tried to defend them from Allura’s vitriol, but she bulldozed over the Paladin leader’s protests, along with Keith and Lance’s arguments (the first time they teamed up, and it was against the Princess). 

The fighting escalated in volume until Coran finally cut in.  “Do not yell at the Princess!” he shouted over the din, trying to preserve the respect the daughter of the King of Altea once had. 

“The princess of what?” Pidge snapped, and even Keith winced at that.  He was just as bad about forgetting not to hurt the people on his side, but even he could recognize that there was a line somewhere, and judging by the look on Allura’s face Pidge had just crossed it. 

But of all the responses, he hadn’t been expecting the Princess of long-gone Altea to throw her food goo at Pidge.  Keith didn’t hate Allura, but there were some things he could not allow, and Pidge was one of very few people he really truly deeply cared about.  This could not stand. 

Neither of them had free hands, but Keith could work with what he had.  “Go loose, Pidge!” Despite their size difference, the Green Paladin’s arm moved easily with his, and the bowl of food goo hit Allura square in the face.  Pidge shrieked with delight, echoed by Lance’s excited squawk, and Keith heard a distinctive cough on his other side as Shiro tried not to burst out laughing. 

To Allura’s credit, she recovered quite quickly despite the blobs of green dripping down her hair.  “Oh, so that’s how you want to do this,” she said with a dangerous smile.  Keith only had an instant to wonder just what he’d gotten himself into before the food fight began in earnest. 

It was complete chaos as was to be expected, with food and dishes flying every which way.  Shiro got nailed in the forehead with a frisbee-flung plate by Coran (or possibly Hunk) and Lance ended up wearing a bowl like a hat for most of the battle.  Pidge got blinded by the goo all over his glasses but was a good partner anyway as long as the other did the targeting. 

By the end they were all exhausted and there was goo absolutely _everywhere._   Allura looked far too smug as she talked quietly with Coran, like she’d planned this.  Keith was pretty sure she hadn’t planned on getting goo down her dress collar, which there definitely was. 

“I actually don’t hate you right now,” Lance said, trying to comb his hair back into a semblance of normal and failing utterly. 

Keith huffed a laugh, shaking his head to get the goo out of his ear.  “Me too, I guess,” he said, ignoring Shiro’s _I Am A Proud Big Brother_ smile. 

Hunk’s headband had almost gotten shoved over his eyes.  He pushed it back up, smushing green goo up his forehead.  He was beaming.  “We’re brothers, man!”

Before this stupid food fight, the comment would have meant nothing to Keith.  He had a brother, standing right next to him, and nobody else mattered.  Pidge would have bristled, would have fought against the concept, missing his own brother and not wanting any stand-ins. 

Now, though… now, Keith just smiled, letting Hunk bear-hug him like he was doing to the others.  His list of People Keith Cares About might be getting bigger soon, and he felt surprisingly okay about it. 

Pidge made some token grumbles, muttering about how they were all too dumb and ridiculous for him to want to be related to them.  But he looked happy, and when the Yellow Paladin reached out, Pidge reached back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in addition to being a real life writer with a real life posting schedule, i'm also going to make an attempt to be more... present? on the internets. so i'll try to be around more, both on here and on the very disorganized [tumblr](https://luoup.tumblr.com/), if you ever want to say hello or shriek about fictional characters with me. trust me. there's a lot of shrieking going on. 
> 
> thank you for your patience, and i hope to see you all again soon!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, this is a good sign. first week into the new "i'm trying to be a Functional Writer(TM)" schedule and i only have half a chapter to post. 
> 
> i don't really have an excuse, other than my life's a mess and i have exactly zero time to do anything but class and homework. but i am going to finish this up tomorrow between the two Big Events of the Day, and just try to keep on keepin' on. 
> 
> if you're reading this, sorry and know that you are the reason i am trying at all. thanks for your interest; i really appreciate it despite my inability to do anything on time. 
> 
> EDIT: REST OF THE CHAPTER IS UP NOW THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE

Pidge stared at the strange fish-faced alien.  He didn’t want to believe it.  Matt and Shiro were best friends, and Pidge didn’t want to believe that Shiro would ever hurt him. 

But a lot had changed in the last year.  Shiro couldn’t remember anything at all, couldn’t even see Katie in Pidge’s face, couldn’t even see _Matt_ in his little sister’s mirror of him.  Pidge had spent a year defying the Garrison’s beliefs that the _Persephone_ had crashed, but he was finding it hard to ignore the alien’s words. 

Shiro looked the same way.  He clearly remembered enough to know that he cared about Matt, and he looked horrified at the thought that he might have hurt his friend.  But he didn’t challenge the alien, didn’t deny the story.  Shiro was here, Matt was still missing, and something terrible had happened between them, whether or not Shiro could remember it. 

Everything that had happened, and this felt like the first true betrayal.  Pidge had never had much faith in the Garrison – too big and secretive and militaristic – but in all his thoughts he had never imagined that Shiro might hurt his brother.  It seemed impossible. But everything about this seemed impossible, and Shiro’s lack of denial only made it worse.  For the first time, Pidge felt… uncertain. 

*

It was a rare moment when Pidge and Keith were able to get a moment away from the others, able to talk freely and without secrets.  Keith had some absurd stories of the morning: Coran was the universe’s worst cook but Hunk was Keith’s new personal deity of all things kitcheny, and they had officially met the Arusians.  The others had laughed at Keith’s caution around the tiny aliens – Arusians sounded reminiscent of snails but with four limbs and sacrificial dances of apology – but the Red Paladin knew better than anyone that size was not indicative of danger.  They were also apparently nice to hug but the vocal range was something to be prepared for (Keith had nearly dropped the poor being right on the floor). 

Then it was Pidge’s turn to talk, and things took a turn for the much more serious. 

“Shiro did _what?”_

If Keith kept yelling, this meeting wasn’t going to stay secret for long. 

 “He hurt Matt.  That tall gray alien saw it.  Attacked him with a sword, cut his leg, yelled in his face.  And then went into the gladiator arenas and became some kind of undefeated Champion.”

Keith rubbed his face slowly.  “I can’t believe that.  They were so close, I can’t believe that he would do something like that.”

“He did,” Pidge snapped.  Thinking about Matt, about Matt being hurt, was making him even more anxious than usual.  “He didn’t deny it.  Crazy stuff happened over the last year, who knows what went on out here while we were sitting around on Earth with no idea if they were even alive.  You’ve seen Shiro’s arm.  And the way he _fights_ –”

“Shiro wouldn’t hurt Matt,” Keith growled. 

“Maybe he wouldn’t have, before all this,” Pidge growled right back.  “But things are different.  He doesn’t remember _anything_.  We have no idea what he would or wouldn’t do, now.”

Keith looked like he was about to respond, but then his eyes flicked up and he straightened.  “Uh.  Hey, Shiro.”

Pidge turned.  Shiro stood in the doorway, looking a little confused to see the two of them together, but he shrugged it off and spoke. “Hi Keith.  Pidge, I remember being on the ship that we took down, Sendak’s cruiser.  I was thinking, and I wondered if it’s not too badly damaged the computers may still have data logs or something.  Maybe that can tell us more about where you dad and brother are.” His tone didn’t quite conceal the… apology? guilt? in his voice.  “There’s not much going on today.  We could go now.”

Pidge was quiet for a moment.  Then he nodded.  “Okay.  Let me get my armor and some equipment; I’ll meet you at the front gate.”  He left, and if he skirted just a little farther around Shiro than he needed to, well.  Shiro understood.  He wasn’t sure if he would trust himself, either, after hearing what he’d done to his old friend. 

He wasn’t sure if he would trust himself now, anyway. 

*

The Green and Black Paladins took one of the castle’s little pods to the site of the Galra ship crash.  Shiro drove.  They didn’t talk much.  The alien’s words _– Champion – sword – vicious – blood –_ hung over them like the Galra witch’s claws.  Shiro searched his patchy memory, finding nothing but blurs and a feeling like a smile, a laugh that used to be familiar and a hand on his shoulder.  Pidge filtered through thoughts of his brother, memories of Matt and Shiro and stories of their antics together at the Garrison and at home.  Their closeness.  And now… Matt was missing, and Shiro was changed enough to have hurt him.  Pidge had gotten what he wanted – the Kerberos mission hadn’t crashed, hadn’t died – but he wasn’t sure he was liking what had gone on instead. 

Shiro didn’t know Pidge, didn’t remember Katie.  But Pidge knew Shiro.  For years he’d been Matt’s friend, come over to hang out and play video games and have dinner, sometimes bringing along his little brother who Pidge didn’t really get along with.  For years, he’d been practically another brother to Katie.  Now, so much had happened, and Pidge wasn’t sure that he quite trusted Shiro anymore. 

He wasn’t sure what to make of that. 

The Galra ship had landed hard, but it wasn’t totally destroyed and the central command room and its bank of computers was mostly intact.  Excitement rose in Pidge, only to drop when he tapped at the screen and nothing happened.  “Dead.  The power system must have been taken out in the crash.” He tapped some more, poking and tugging at bits while Shiro watched.  “The computers look undamaged, though… if I just had a power source…”

“Like this one?” Pidge turned to see Shiro holding up his right arm – the one that had been replaced with metal. 

 _Oh._  

“I… yes.  Just like that.  Come here real quick, put your hand… hmm… here,” he pointed at a flat space on the bank.  Shiro obeyed, and moments later screens were lighting up, giving status reports and damage calculations and other things that Shiro couldn’t understand because despite spending a year deep in Galra space he had apparently learned very little of the language.  Maybe he’d forgotten it.  Or maybe he’d only ever learned spoken Galran – when would a prisoner gladiator need to read? 

Pidge, apparently, had no hangups.  Either he’d manipulated the Paladin helmet to translate Galran into English or something, or he had just picked it up that fast.  Shiro was pretty sure he’d been working on figuring out the Altean in the castle, too.  Whoever this kid was, he was pretty dang smart. 

Both were quiet, Pidge tapping various commands into the computer as Shiro watched the data transfer percentage bar creep up on one of the bigger screens.  Suddenly all of Shiro’s hair stood on end.  _Something is wrong._

 _Something bad is coming._  

The ship was cracked open, so he had a perfect view of the sky, and of the ship that was rapidly approaching Arus. 

“Pidge, we need to g–”

“No.” For such a tiny person, Pidge’s grip was firm on Shiro’s metal wrist, holding his hand tightly to the panel that was keeping the computer powered.  “Don’t move.  I’m not done.” He didn’t even look up, still working on the computer.  Maybe he trusted him more than he thought, relying on the Black Paladin to keep him informed so he could focus. 

The transfer bar read 43%. 

 _danger danger DANGER_ rang Shiro’s brain.  _50%_ said the bar. 

“I’m sorry, Pidge!”

 _“No!”_ Pidge shouted as Shiro’s flesh arm wrapped around his waist, yanking him away as he fired his jetpack.  The computer screens flickered and died as they lost their power source.  Pidge had only half of the ship’s logs. 

“Let go!  Shiro, let me go!” Pidge kicked and wriggled like a child, but Shiro’s grasp was firm and he didn’t release the other Paladin.  “Those logs could tell me where my family is!  _Shiro, let go, I need to find them!”_  

“I’m sorry,” Shiro repeated, flying them out of the ship in great bounding leaps.  His voice was strained, and as they landed on the ground Pidge finally looked up. 

There was a new ship in the sky, and it was heading right for them.  Fast. 

Shiro was shouting into the comms, calling for backup, for something – but nobody would get here in time.  The others were at the castle, or the Arusian village.  Nobody would make it here before the ship did.  And it was too big for two tiny humans to survive such an impact. 

Pidge was still staring at the sky as Shiro wrapped around him, curving his back like he could protect the other just with his own body, like he wasn’t made of flesh and bone just like Pidge, like he wasn’t just as breakable. 

The ship struck Arus, and Sendak’s shattered vessel vanished in a cloud of dust and rubble. 

*

Keith’s hands definitely weren’t shaking. 

He couldn’t get Shiro’s voice out of his head.  Red was the fastest Lion, but he needed her to be _faster._   Something was terribly wrong. 

He got just close enough to see the site, straining to spot the tiny specks of black and green he knew were in it.  Then the giant ship came crashing down, obliterating it all. 

Keith couldn’t breathe.  No.  No no nonono _they were in there_ they couldn’t be gone, couldn’t couldn’t –

The dust began to clear.  The old Galra ship was gone, shattered beyond anything.  But there wasn’t only rubble: two Lions crouched in the dust, and beneath them were those two little specks.  Keith felt his heart begin to beat again. 

 _“I didn’t know they could do that,”_ murmured Shiro’s voice on the radio.  Keith couldn’t say anything, throat still too tight. 

The robeast was huge.  It was as big as Voltron, maybe even bigger.  But there was no time to sit and stare at it – Shiro and Pidge may have been saved by their Lions (because Keith had been _too slow_ ) but they were still far too close to the creature, and it was in attack mode. 

The robeast had some kind of weapon, a club – no, not a club, Keith realized as he watched the orb on top go flying out to –

It hit the Green Lion dead-on.  The Left Arm of Voltron flew backwards and hit the ground hard, Pidge’s cry echoing through the comms.  Shiro made a sharp sound, startling to Keith even through the haze of adrenaline.  The robeast charged, clearly planning to finish the job, but it never reached its target: the Black Lion leapt through the air and crashed into it, knocking them both to the ground.  It threw the Lion off easily, but then the others were there.  Keith shouted something, an order to defend, to protect, and Lance provided.  Keith’s focus was elsewhere. 

“You guys okay down there?” He hoped his voice wasn’t shaking as bad as it felt it was. 

Pidge made an assenting noise as the Green Lion stood back up.  Shiro’s response was a little staticky but clear enough. “Still alive for now.”

 _You had better damn be._  

“Battle Lion Headbutt!” Hunk’s Lion slammed into the robeast.  It was knocked off-balance for a moment, but regained itself quickly and then Yellow was thrown back. 

This thing was too big for any of them to beat on their own.  They needed to form Voltron. 

They’d struggled so much, earlier.  All those training exercises had failed so badly.  But now, in the heat of battle with an enemy just a breath away, it was… easy.  Just flowing together, like water, like magnets. 

And then they were one.  Voltron did not tower over the robeast, but they were all together now, strong and confident.  They could win. 

Except this wasn’t working.  Nothing they did had any impact on the gigantic robeast.  Admittedly, Keith probably shouldn’t have flat-out punched the orb itself, but in his defense he was under a lot of stress.  He was very carefully not thinking about what had just happened, how close the two people he cared about most had come to dying (again).  Pidge went for the face but that didn’t work either.  Lance’s kick would have been really impressive if he’d actually succeeded – instead he missed and the orb hit the Black Lion straight on.  Pidge wasn’t really a pilot no matter how much he’d read, and nothing could have prepared him for the Lions anyway; he mixed up the laser and the shield and Voltron got knocked down as he panicked. 

“Every time we focus on the monster, the orb hits us, and every time we focus on the orb the monster gets us!” Hunk shouted as they got bowled over again.  One enemy, they could handle.  But this weapon was impossibly powerful, and the creature itself seemed to feel no damage.  Fear and frustration flowed through the bond, each Paladin struggling as Voltron floundered. 

Everyone was shouting, but the Black Lion was silent.  Keith felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle.  “Shiro?” he tried. 

Nothing. 

“Shiro!”

_“Shiro!”_

_Everything had been so cloudy.  Blurred memories, empty spaces like a missing limb.  But now the water has settled and he can see clearly.  There are still missing pieces, but this fragment has returned to him and he clings to it like treasure._

_He has seen this beast before.  His name is Myzax, and he used to be smaller; although still larger than Shiro.  He knows how to beat him._

_He sees other things, too.  Matt Holt, the fight the rescued prisoner had described.  It had happened – Shiro had wounded his friend – but he knew why, now.  He wasn’t the monster he feared he was._

_“Take care of your father.” Sam Holt.  The commander of the_ Persephone _mission, Shiro’s captain.  Matt’s father._

 _Even before_ Persephone _– Shiro and Matt, at Matt’s house or Shiro’s, at the Garrison, at some weird bar with bad music.  Keith tagging along, sulking like a proper little brother.  And –_

_Matt’s sibling.  Matt’s little sister.  A face he’s seen for so many years, and… and more recently, too._

_Katie._

“Shiro, answer me, please!”

Keith.  Real life.  They’re in a fight.  Myzax has become a horrible robotic monster, but Shiro has beaten him once before, alone in an arena with his friend’s terrified eyes on him.  Now he’s not on his own – the Black Lion is strong in his mind and beneath his hands, and there are others around him, part of him.  He can do it again. 

“I know how to beat the robeast.”

But this Myzax was stronger than before, and not even the Lions’ lasers were powerful enough to wound him. 

Something about a sword.  Keith didn’t fully hear it, because suddenly the Red Lion was blooming in his mind like a tigerlily.  Semi-formed images flashed in front of his eyes, too fast and too blurred to interpret, but the panel opening at his right was clear enough. 

“I think my Lion is telling me what to do,” Keith almost murmured, staring at it.  The space matched the shape of a Bayard perfectly. 

“Well, whatever it is, hurry up and do it – he’s about to fire his third shot!” Lance’s voice was crackly with static and stress. 

Keith did it. 

A bright flash, and suddenly a sword had formed from the Red Lion’s jaws.  Voltron was armed. 

Keith had never known anything about giant robot space lions before a few days ago, but he knew exactly what to do.  Instinct, the Red Lion’s specialty. 

Besides, Keith knew how to use a blade.  This wasn’t his dagger, sure, but it felt familiar nonetheless. 

A single slash, a powerful confident blow with all of Voltron’s strength behind it, and the Robeast exploded in a violent burst that did nothing against the armor of Voltron. 

Keith smiled down at the control panel as his ship hummed (purred?) beneath him.  “Thanks, Red.”

The threat was vanquished.  Voltron had won. 

*

“You saved him.”

Pidge could hardly believe it.  He was so happy to believe it.  Shiro wasn’t evil or crazy or monstrous.  He had hurt Matt, but he’d saved him too.  Pidge felt like a weight had been removed from his chest, like he could suddenly breathe again.  It felt like a restoration of trust. 

He couldn’t stop the tears.  He missed Matt desperately, every minute of every day.  Worry and fear and secrets were a heavy burden, and he was so tired.  But Shiro was right here, living proof that Matt could still be alive somewhere out there.  All Pidge had to do was find him. 

Shiro had attacked his best friend, had wounded him, but it had been to save him.  Shiro had gone into the arena, had lost his arm and his memories, all to save Matt.  Matt was still missing, but Pidge could lean into Shiro’s side and remember all the times he’d hugged him, back on Earth before _Persephone_ and everything that had happened after.  Things were worlds different now, and Shiro’s arm was hard and cold even through the sweater, but there was still something familiar at the core.  _Warm.  Real.  Safe._  

He couldn’t see Shiro’s face, but he could feel the vibrations of his voice rumbling in his chest where Pidge was curled.  “I know you miss them.  I know they miss you too.”  _You’ll see each other soon, I know._  

“Your brother and father would be proud of you, Katie.”

Pidge’s body froze.  He –

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Shiro murmured, and his arms around Pidge’s body felt like the safest place in the universe. 

_He knew.  He remembered._

Pidge didn’t say anything.  He didn’t think the words would make it out if he tried.  Instead, he hugged Shiro tighter. 

Maybe things would be okay after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm still having a rough time figuring out how much of exact canon to include in how much detail, plus developing new bits and reworking certain scenes. it's going pretty slow at first because there's a lot of detail and interaction and things i feel are relevant - hopefully will pick up a bit soon. 
> 
> if you have any thoughts, i'm all ears - free for talking here or [tumblr](https://luoup.tumblr.com/) ! let me know what you think!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOOK AT ME I'M STILL ON TIME (barely)  
> and with a whole chapter to boot! 
> 
> this was a lot of stuff going on in one chapter, but it felt like the best way to break things up. i'm starting to try to intersperse interactions with other characters as the team begins to really form - we'll get more of that as time goes on. 
> 
> giving myself a headache with the pidge-katie bouncing. i hope it still makes sense.

“He called me Katie.”

Keith’s breath left his lungs in a rush.  He closed his eyes for a moment, processing.  _He remembers_. 

Pidge leaned harder against the door.  Maybe he was making sure that it was well-shut, that they were truly alone and safe with their secrets.  Maybe he just needed pressure, touch, something. 

Keith was pretty sure it was both. 

“This is… this is good, right?  He remembered you, maybe some of his memories are coming back,” Keith tried. 

Pidge nodded, a sharp shaky movement.  “He remembered fighting Myzax in the arenas.  He remembered Matt.  He remembered – he remembered me.  He’s known you from the start.  He said there’s still a lot missing, but maybe it’ll come back gradually.  And that’s good.  A lot of it is going to be bad and we need to be prepared for that, but… yeah.  It’s good that he’s getting his mind back.”  He still looked like he was made of sand, a delicate form about to shatter. 

Keith hesitated.  Even after so much time, he never really felt like he quite fully understood Pidge, or the differences between “Pidge” and “Katie,” and what he was missing.  Keith was never really confident around people anyway.  But this was his friend, and he didn’t want to stand there and watch the sand crumble before his eyes. 

“Can I hug you?”

Pidge’s eyes flicked up, and Keith caught a glimpse of _Katie_ inside.  Shiro’s memory had blurred the separation more than Pidge seemed to be prepared for, and it had always been less distinct when Keith was the only one around.  He didn’t know which one nodded, but it was enough. 

They were the two smallest members of Voltron, but Pidge had a way of becoming _small_ when he wanted to.  He curled into Keith’s chest, folding in on himself like damp paper, and Keith tucked his chin over the other’s head and tried to be the armor that Pidge was usually so good at manifesting on his own. 

“He called me Katie.” Pidge was almost inaudible, words spoken into Keith’s ribs like secrets.  “I almost forgot.  There’s so much going on, with space and aliens and _Voltron,_ and I – I almost forgot it.  I’m _Katie_.”

Keith had never been good at secrets.  He was always out there, always doing what he did without hiding it because that was just who he was.  He couldn’t understand how Pidge felt, Pidge who had always been secretive and stealthy, Pidge who was Pidge but was also Katie.  Keith had only ever been Keith.  He couldn’t relate to this crisis, but he thought about the days when his life started to blur and the desert felt like it was all that existed in the universe, when the sun made the air ripple and the memories of Shiro felt more like a dream or a shadow than a brother, and he thought he might understand just a little bit. 

“You are Katie.  You’re Pidge, too.” Keith was no good at words, but he was pretty sure Pidge needed to hear _something_ right now.  Pidge’s brain was too big, and Keith had seen it swallow him whole before.  Keith could be an anchor, if that would help stop the trembling he could feel in the birdlike body beneath his hands.  “You’re the Green Paladin.  You’re a Holt.  You’re my friend.  You can be a lot of things at once; I’ve seen you do it.  So has Shiro.”

The trembling eased, slowly.  Pidge sighed.  “I’m Pidge.  And I’m Katie, I _am_ , but… I don’t think I can be right now.  Not yet.

“I’m Matt’s little sister.  Maybe when I have him back, when my brother is with me like yours is, then I can be Katie too.”

Keith hoped it would be soon, for all their sakes. 

 

* * *

_"I knew you would not disappoint me, Haxus."_

* * *

 

Keith was definitely not a party person.  But maybe this wasn’t so bad.  Pidge was missing – probably hiding somewhere to analyze data in peace, he was no more social than Keith was.  Somehow, though, Keith was finding himself less and less uncomfortable around Hunk and Lance. 

Lance was actually kind of funny when he wasn’t being a pain or flirting with anything vaguely female-shaped (Keith couldn’t wait until the disaster that would occur he learned about Pidge) or getting into this presumed rivalry that Keith knew nothing about.  And he was rapidly finding out that it was nearly impossible to dislike Hunk. 

The guy had absolutely zero pilot training and had never even wanted to be one (at least Pidge had known a little bit, even with no experience) and he was clearly terrified of most of what space had to offer, not that Keith blamed him.  But he was smart, probably the only one who could keep up with Pidge when the little Paladin really got going, and his cooking was an absolute godsend.  He’d accepted Keith with no questions asked, and seemed to make an effort to include him despite Lance’s protests.  Shiro was the leader and was always busy and Pidge, despite his secrets, had still been part of their Garrison team, so Keith found himself appreciating the outreach more than he’d thought he would. 

The party was definitely more okay than Keith had expected it to be.  He got to watch Lance choke on some nunvil or whatever this weird space juice was, and the food was way better than their usual goo (or, stars forbid, Coran’s cooking).  There was something weird involving a “team cheer” or something, but Keith didn’t get it and Shiro wasn’t around to explain.  The robot’s name was Voltron, why was this so hard?  At least Hunk and Lance seemed to think he was funny, even if he couldn’t figure out the cheer. 

Then Lance got sad about… something, maybe missing Earth, and wandered off halfway through the party, leaving Keith and Hunk alone.  Keith was uncertain at first, waiting for Hunk to go after his friend or leave to talk to other people.  Keith was definitely not a skilled conversation partner. 

But Hunk didn’t disappear.  He stayed beside Keith, poking at something he’d grabbed off a passing tray.  “Do you think they made all this stuff from what’s around on Arus?” he asked half-distractedly.  “And if we’re leaving, is there gonna be this much variety on every planet?  That would be wild.  Earth has _so many_ different kinds of food, I can’t even imagine how much there could be in the whole universe!  And then you could combine ingredients or methods from different planets, even different solar systems, and…” He cut himself off suddenly, straightening with an awkward grin on his face.  “Sorry.  Babbling.  I’ll stop now.”

“No,” Keith blurted.  “It’s – it’s okay.  I mean, if anyone can figure out better food on this castle than that green goo, it’s gonna be you.  And I… I don’t mind listening to wordbabble.  At least you’re a little more understandable than Pidge.”

Hunk’s smile shifted, morphing into something happier and more real.  “Oh man, just wait until I get into an engine room.  Then I really get going.” When the next tray went by he snagged two, handing one to Keith like it was nothing.  “Pidge is really something, though, huh?  He’d been listening to space radio waves back at the Garrison, out on the roof in the middle of the night.  He built the whole thing himself, it was so cool!”

 _I know,_ Keith didn’t say.  _I helped him build it.  I helped him sort through the data.  He stored his records and notes in my house – the little shack you helped me carry my brother into after we rescued him from the lying sneaking Garrison._ He couldn’t say any of that, though.  Not his secrets to tell, not yet.  He took a drink from his cup to keep Hunk from reading anything on his face. 

Unfortunately, Lance hadn’t been exaggerating about the taste of nunvil and Keith ended up spitting it right into Hunk’s face.  The Yellow Paladin looked shocked for a second, but then they both just cracked up, laughing until they were breathless.  Keith didn’t laugh much, hadn’t really since his brother had been taken by the sky.  It felt nice.  It felt really nice. 

 

* * *

  _“Bomb activated.”_

* * *

 

 “I’m leaving Voltron.”

Keith’s blood froze in his veins at the words.  _No.  You can’t go.  We need you.  I need you.  You can’t._

“I got enough data from Sendak’s ship to point me in the right direction,” Pidge said, shifting his weight from foot to foot.  “I’ve got a pod all ready to go.  I can’t find my family just sitting in this castle.”

Keith couldn’t tear his eyes away from the backpack slung over the Green Paladin’s shoulder.  Had he just been planning to leave before Allura had talked to him?  Had he even planned to say goodbye?

“You can’t leave!” Keith said with too much force, too much emotion, in his words. 

Pidge turned on him, eyes flashing.  “You can’t tell me what to do!”

_Nobody can tell Katie Holt what to do.  Keith knew that.  But he couldn’t just let Pidge leave him._

“You’re not the only one in the universe with a family!”

“I never asked to become a soldier in a crazy space war!”

“You’re putting the lives of two people over the lives of everyone else in the entire galaxy!”

“They’re my family, and I’m going to find them no matter what!”

Part of Keith wondered what Allura and Hunk must be thinking, watching the Arms of Voltron shout at each other with too much weight in their words.  Shiro, too – even if he remembered Katie, she and Keith had never been very close before the _Persephone_ disappeared and the Garrison began to lie. 

This was devolving rapidly. 

Shiro finally stopped them.  Good thing, too – Keith was shaking with rage and what was absolutely not fear, and he was just about on the verge of punching Pidge, or grabbing him and shaking some sense back into that so-called genius brain.  “That’s not how a team works,” the Black Paladin said, one hand on Keith’s chest, the other on Pidge’s shoulder.  “People have to want to be part of it.  Pidge, we won’t stop you,” he pressed harder against Keith, drowning the words his younger brother wanted to shout, “but please, think about what you’re doing.”

“I am.  That’s why I’m leaving.” Pidge at least had the grace to glance at Keith with something like remorse, eyes flicking over to Hunk and Shiro too.  “I’m sorry.  You’re going to have to find someone else to pilot the Green Lion.”

*

Pidge had barely vanished from view before Keith tore himself free from Shiro’s hands and charged after him.  He ignored Shiro’s calls, ignored the confusion and concern of Hunk and Allura. 

Pidge couldn’t just _leave_.  He was a Paladin!  They had a job to do, a universe to protect.  Why couldn’t he understand that this was bigger than just them?  Why couldn’t he understand what would happen if he just disappeared? 

He caught up to the Green Paladin – because he was still the damn Green Paladin and needed to stay and do that job – after only moments.  Pidge looked startled, then angry as Keith stormed right up to him. 

“Don’t try–”

 “You can’t–”

Pidge snarled, and Keith stepped back from the amount of sheer emotion in his eyes.  “You’re not going to stop me!  The Garrison couldn’t, the universe couldn’t, and you sure as hell aren’t going to!”

“You’re a Paladin, you can’t just _go_ –”

“Don’t give me that shit,” Pidge hissed.  “Just because you have your brother back doesn’t mean I have to stop looking for mine.”

Keith struggled to get the words out through a throat crushed with a stomach-turning mix of anxiety and anger.  “And you really think you’re going to find him like that?  Out in empty space, alone with a pod and a drone?  The universe is _huge_ , Pidge, and Matt is one tiny human somewhere out there.” He winced at his own words, at the hurt in Pidge’s face.  “Stay here,” he tried.  “You have a Lion.  You have the castle and all its systems.  We’ll find him, but it’ll be faster, better, if you stay.” He tried to pretend there wasn’t a pleading tone in his voice.  _We’ll find him.  Together.  Please don’t go.  Please don’t leave me._

For a second, he thought it might work.  Pidge was silent and still, staring at nothing.  Then he refocused, and there was something in his face that Keith had only ever seen directed at reporters and Garrison officers, never ever at Keith.  Pidge’s voice was cold and quiet, energy and rage refocusing to diamond-pinpoint.  “If Shiro was the one still missing – if Matt had been the one to come home instead, to join Voltron – would you stay?”

He couldn’t answer that.  He couldn’t, because he knew the answer just as well as Katie did. 

When Pidge turned and walked away, heading for the hangars and the waiting pod with the little green drone at his side, Keith didn’t stop him. 

 

* * *

  _“Hey, Rover.  Wait… where’s Pidge?”_

* * *

  

The explosion nearly knocked Keith off his feet.  He’d just returned to the others, avoiding Shiro’s gaze and not answering when Allura asked what he’d said to Pidge, if he’d convinced the Green Paladin to change his mind.  He staggered and fell against Shiro, his brother’s strange metal arm the only thing that kept him from a faceplant.  Hunk wasn’t so lucky and wound up sitting flat on the floor, and Allura did a weird little dance to keep her balance and still ended up leaning only somewhat elegantly against a wall. 

“What the quiznak was that?!” Hunk’s eyes were wide and frightened.  Keith only had time to look at him, eyes meeting with equal measures of confusion and apprehension, before the castle’s lights flickered and died. 

The Paladin suits still glowed, as did Allura’s earrings and, very faintly, her pink Altean cheek-marks.  The Princess’s eyes reflected the glow of the armor more than a Human’s would.  “We need to find Coran.  He… he will know what’s going on.  He’ll fix this.”

Shiro was the one to find the mechanic, lying unconscious on the floor of the engine room.  The crystal that powered the Castle of Lions was shattered.  What remained was dull and unlit, just broken stone now with no energy remaining. 

Coran woke up.  Lance didn’t. 

“We have to get him to the infirmary.” Keith hadn’t even noticed Pidge arrive, but there he was, standing beside Hunk like he’d never planned to leave.  He didn’t meet Keith’s eyes, focusing on his wounded teammate held carefully in Shiro’s arms. 

Allura was chewing on her lips, twisting her hands in her skirt.  “The crystal is destroyed.  The castle has no power, and the healing pods will not work.”

“Then we get another crystal, now.”

Coran started to say something, maybe about the crystal (did they keep some in storage?  Keith hoped they did), when the Arusian king burst into the room, his little arms waving frantically.  “Paladins!  Paladins!  Help!  Our village is under attack!  You must defend us!”

 _Too many damn crises at once,_ Keith thought.  They were stretched too thin for this, but there was no choice.  He spun on his heel.  “We need the Lions–” he began, but Allura interrupted with growing fear on her face. 

“You can’t.  The hangar doors are closed, there’s no way to get them out. 

“We’re defenseless.”

 _We’re on our own.  Whoever did this is still here, and we do not have the Lions to protect us._  

“We have to get a new crystal to get the castle working again.” Coran seemed to have recovered from the explosion.  Maybe he’d been farther away, or maybe Alteans were sturdier than humans, or maybe Lance had taken the damage protecting him.  “But to get a new crystal, we need a ship.  Which we don’t have.”

 _Still out.  We’ve got nothing._   Keith’s bitterness was cut short by Pidge’s sudden words. 

“Yes we do.”  The smallest Paladin’s eyes flashed with a familiar light, and despite everything Keith felt himself relax marginally.  Pidge was on it.  They wouldn’t lose. 

Pidge left with Coran and Hunk, taking them to the side hangar where he’d stored his pod.  He wasn’t going anywhere now, and Keith viciously repressed a tiny feeling of victory.  He’d wanted Pidge to stay, but this situation was not worth that win. 

Keith and Allura would go to the Arusians to give what assistance they could.  He couldn’t do anything about the castle, but Keith was at least going to beat up whatever Galra had decided to attack a defenseless village.  Shiro would stay behind, guarding the castle and watching over Lance until the others returned. 

Keith hoped Hunk and Coran found the crystal fast.  He didn’t like the feeling of vulnerability, of being exposed.  He wanted the powerful hum of the castle around him, a sound he hadn’t realized he’d grown used to until it was cut off.  He wanted his Lion back. 

The village was burning.  Ignoring Allura’s gasp and call, Keith charged into the flames.  He was a close-range combatant, standing around the edges was useless for his fighting style.  And he really, really wanted to fight something right now. 

But something was wrong.  The fire roared, but there was no sound of soldiers, of machinery.  Keith spotted the silhouettes of a few sentrybots, but even as he approached one fell down, and another tilted over to lean against a wall.  They were all broken. 

It was fake. 

Keith’s chest felt frozen, his heart sinking into his stomach as realization dawned.  _They got us._

His voice cracked as he shouted desperately into the comms.  “They tricked us!  It was just a diversion to separate us and thin the castle defenses!”

Silence answered him.  He felt like he’d been filled with rocks and ice water.  Keith ran as fast as he ever had in his life towards Allura.  Towards the castle, towards the Lions, towards Shiro waiting alone.  Towards where the real danger was. 

 

* * *

  _“Voltron is ours.”_

* * *

 

Princess and Paladin reached the castle walls just as the particle barrier shimmered into place, clear as a soap bubble and impenetrable as steel.  Keith had watched warship cannon blasts skitter off this barrier, seen massive explosions leave not the faintest trace of damage.  But he still hit at it with all his strength, almost attacking it with his Red Bayard in sheer desperation.  “Too late,” he whispered, realizing what had happened, how they had been played. 

Allura pressed her palms to the barrier as if her simple touch would allow her entry.  It glittered in the light of the setting sun but did not respond.  “They’re inside,” she murmured, staring hard as if she could see through the walls, see their friends and their enemies deep inside Voltron’s walls. 

 _They’re inside.  Shiro’s in there, and so are the Galra.  And I’m out here, and I can do nothing._   Terror and rage boiled over, burning his veins, and Keith drew his dagger, slamming the point into the particle barrier which didn’t so much as crack.  _“No!”_

There was nothing they could do.  The Galra had reactivated the castle, sealing it off, and Keith and Allura were left to sit outside as the Arusian sun disappeared slowly beneath the horizon, leaving the sickening purple glow of the corrupted castle as the only light. 

Keith had never been religious.  None of that stuff had ever meant much to him.  But now he found himself sitting on an alien planet, leaning against an impenetrable barrier and wishing he could pray.  But he’d never believed in anything but stars and space and speed. 

So he prayed to Pidge’s mind, to Katie’s ability to never ever get caught.  He prayed to Shiro’s resilience, to his brother’s heart that never stopped or faded. 

They would make it.  They had to. 

*

*

*

*

*

_"Keith, can you hear me?”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey all. i'm so dang sorry that it took me another week to get this chapter out. i had two exams last week and one this week, and also a huge paper due because this semester is terrible. if it makes it any better, this is almost certainly the longest chapter i've ever written. this was one of the parts i've been most looking forward to in this whole fic so i was really mad that my life took such a downturn in the couple of weeks that this was supposed to happen in. sorry for the wait and i hope you enjoy. 
> 
> ALSO: WE MADE IT TO 1000 HITS WHILE I WAS MIA THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH

“Keith, can you hear me?”

Pidge held his breath.  He knew radio signals could pass through the barrier, but he didn’t know if Keith’s helmet was in range.  Or if he had it on.  Or if he was okay.  The Arusian village had been under attack, after all.  Their enemies were everywhere, and they were spread far too thin to handle this easily. 

_Please pick up, please pick up, please –_

_“Pidge!  Where are you?”_ The voice through the comm was crackly and fuzzed, but Pidge had never been so relieved to hear someone shouting in his life. 

“I’m inside the castle,” he said quietly.  Sendak, the other Galra, and their sentrybots were in the bridge while Pidge was in a vent a safe distance away, but Pidge wasn’t taking any chances.  “Sendak has taken over and is preparing for launch.  He’s contacted Zarkon and plans to bring the Lions right to him.” And as if that wasn’t enough bad news – “He’s got Lance and Shiro.”

A heartbeat of dead silence, and then Keith was cursing so loudly Pidge nearly pulled his helmet off to stop from being partially deafened.  Then Allura was talking, and although Pidge could hear the fear in her voice she was clear and focused, trying to figure out a way for them to still win this. 

Okay.  Pidge could do this.  “What do I have to do?”

_Don’t think about Shiro, recaptured by the very Galra who took the Kerberos mission.  Don’t think about Lance, injured and unconscious.  Don’t think about how the castle is purple now instead of blue, about how the safest place you knew has now turned on you.  Don’t think about the castle taking off, flying Voltron straight to Zarkon and ending the rebellion before it ever really began.  Don’t think about how your family would never find you, how your family would never be found.  Don’t think about how everything could end right here, right now._

_Focus._

Pidge knew what he had to do.  Allura’s voice was still in his ear.  Keith was quiet but Pidge knew he was there too, knew he was pressed close against the barrier, as close as he could get, waiting for Pidge to bring down the unbreakable wall so he could come help. 

_But he’s not here right now.  You’re on your own._

_No, not quite.  I’m not alone._   Rover’s little hums and beeps had died down, as if it knew the stakes of this new task.  But it drifted along beside Pidge, ready to help. 

Pidge had never had friends, before all this.  Katie was a social pariah, too smart for her age and too brusque and prickly to get along with humans.  She’d had her computers and her projects and Matt, and it had been fine.  But now – now she had friends, real friends, who needed her.  She wouldn’t fail them.  She couldn’t. 

They reached the turbine just as it started to power up.  The Galra were preparing for launch.  Following Allura’s instructions in his ear, Pidge opened the hatch in the main column. 

_“Find the central computer control hub, then enter the following sequence:–”_

Then nothing.  Pidge said a string of words that would have made his mother sigh.  Even Rover beeped, its lights flickering anxiously.  “Of course the power is too high,” Pidge muttered, glaring at the Altean labels.  “Of course it cuts the communications right now.  Of course I can’t read Altean yet, because we’ve only been in space for like a few days and I’ve been _busy with other things._   Of course.  Just my luck.” 

He didn’t say the other part out loud: of course, if he didn’t stop the takeoff right now, it would all be over.  He was imagining it, he knew, but it felt like the castle was humming beneath him, lifting off into the sky to take Voltron to Zarkon and end everything for good.  Of course, if he didn’t do something, they were all doomed.  Keith and Allura would be left on Arus.  Lance would die of his injuries, and Hunk and Coran would be lost – if they even made it back from the crystal-seeking mission.  Shiro would go back to the arenas, would become the Champion once again or die at the hands of the druids.  Pidge would almost certainly be killed, a useless tiny Human trapped like a rat in a maze in this damned hijacked castle.  Matt and Sam would never be found. 

 _No._   He would never let that happen.  He’d do anything to stop this castle taking off. 

Even this.  Hunk would have a fit about safety if he knew, but Hunk was somewhere in space looking for a magical crystal, and Pidge was on his own. 

“Whatever,” Pidge muttered, and stabbed the katar of his Bayard directly into the hatch. 

The resulting explosion knocked the Green Paladin all the way back across the catwalk.  The turbine sparked and crackled distantly as Pidge lay carefully still, catching his breath and waiting for the ringing in his ears to die down.  Rover had immediately zoomed over and was hovering worriedly, booping a low tone in concern.  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” he reassured the little bot.  “Alright, the castle’s not going anywhere for a bit.  Now what?”

* * *

Shiro was almost certain that he had a concussion.  There were vague memories of this sort of feeling (and worse) in the back of his mind, and this feeling was categorized as “head injury” – hopefully just a mild concussion and nothing worse. 

He couldn’t panic.  He couldn’t lose his head.  Doing that could mean death for both him and Lance.  He stayed still, tried to stay calm, watched Lance’s breathing.  He couldn’t do anything, and the helplessness burned like the handcuffs that pressed into his skin and cut off the power of his Galra arm. 

He could hear the castle powering up.  _Keep your breathing steady._   He couldn’t fall into a flashback now.  But the purple lights of the corrupted Altean castle, the handcuffs and pain, _Sendak_ –

The humming of the castle hiccupped and jerked, and the energy faded.  Something had stopped.   Sendak and Haxus were talking, the anger in their voices making some frightened, fragile part of Shiro want to curl up and hide. 

And then Allura’s voice was coming over the bridge speakers.  But she wasn’t talking to the Galra, she was talking to…

 _Pidge_. 

Allura was telling Pidge how to take down the castle defenses.  Pidge was in the castle.  Pidge was going to stop Sendak. 

Shiro’s relief was snuffed almost instantly.  Allura and Pidge didn’t know that they were being listened to.  Their words drew a perfect map of exactly where Pidge was going.  Sendak was clearly furious at having a saboteur ruining his perfect plan to capture all of the Voltron Lions and carry them directly to Zarkon.  With a few sharp words, he sent Haxus and the sentries off.  He could easily guard a handcuffed and injured Black Paladin and an unconscious and severely wounded Blue Paladin on his own.  In the meantime, his lieutenant and bots would go kill the Green Paladin. 

Fear like ice water flooded his veins.  He tried to breathe through it, tried to focus on Lance’s chest rising and falling instead of the purple on the walls and the fear for others and for himself.  There was nothing he could do now.  He had to trust that Katie wouldn’t get caught, that Pidge wouldn’t let them get him – her – Shiro’s mind was too fogged for this, and the line between little clever Katie back on Earth and stealthy ferocious Pidge the Green Paladin had blurred beyond recognition. 

Pidge could do it.  Shiro could do nothing for now but wait and hope.  He’d known Pidge to do incredible things before.  He could only trust and hope that she could do it again. 

* * *

“I’m in.”

This was one of the most dangerous situations they had ever been in, but Pidge couldn’t help the line slipping out, much as he was sure Keith couldn’t help the muffled snort that came through the comms.  Allura sounded slightly puzzled by his response, but shook it off and continued to guide Pidge through the generator room. 

He stopped for a moment, staring at the great towering pillars of lightning, pale purple like everything Galra, that provided so much power for this enormous alien castle. 

_This is all alien.  This civilization was light-years ahead of Human technology, and they haven’t been doing anything for the last ten thousand years.  You’re staring at the most advanced technology any Human has ever seen.  You don’t know anything about it.  This is the deepest part of the deep end, and your species has hardly even entered the water.  How can you ever hope to understand it?_

“Yes, you can.”

He must have said something of his doubt aloud.  Pidge shook his head hard.  There was no time to sit here waffling about whether or not he could figure out how to use the super-advanced alien tech he’d only just begun to learn about.  Lives depended on it.  _You’re Katie Holt, certified genius.  Now get to work._  

Memories flickered through her mind.  Dinner, just before the Kerberos mission.  Dad had always believed in her, always been confident that his daughter was going to be incredible. 

The “missing” announcement, a months-old video of the _Persephone_ leaving Earth’s atmosphere, her mother’s tears.  That first spark of rage.  _“Pilot error.” “This is indeed a sad day for all of humanity.”_   Fuck the rest of humanity, that’s her _family_ and there is no way they’re gone. 

The Garrison.  Keith.  The reassurance that she wasn’t crazy, that someone else knew that the Garrison was full of shit just like she did.  Sneaking in, over and over and over.  Prying the computer systems open like a hard shell (not that hard, really – they should be ashamed of themselves), and finding rotten fruit within. 

Keith gone, expelled from the school that had been everything to him (well, not quite everything.  Shiro had been more, and once he was gone the Garrison was significantly less valuable).  Alone again.  Keith was still there, but he couldn’t get in anymore and she still could.  So they had changed their plan, and they’d kept going. 

Until Katie herself had gotten caught, and kicked out too.  Their (fake) sympathy for the little girl whose family had gone missing (missing, not dead, and that’s all the motivation she’d needed) all run out at last, and she was finally banned from Garrison grounds.  Not even that had stopped her.  nothing could. 

And nothing would stop her now.  Pidge had built a machine that heard space radio and “Voltron” long before the Blue Lion had called to them.  Her family had believed in her, and now they were relying on her to find them, even all the way out here.  Her new family was relying on her too, now.  Pidge knew she was smart.  This was just another task.  The Garrison hadn’t stood a chance against her.  Neither would Sendak, or this awe-inspiring and kind of terrifying Altean technology. 

Pidge took a deep breath.  Then he spoke, quiet but enough to get through the radio.  “Okay, Allura.  Talk me through it.”

The alien princess’s voice was clear in his ears.  _“Stay away from the energy arcs,”_ she said, voice distracted as she thought through how to instruct the Paladin. 

Pidge glanced at the humming crackling columns of light, suppressing a snort.  “Don’t touch the giant lightning bolts, got it.”

_“Now what I’m going to need you to do is–”_

What Allura needed Pidge to do was going to have to wait, because right now Pidge needed to run.  The Galra sentrybots had somehow tracked them down _(who are you kidding, you know better than anyone how many cameras are in this castle)_.  He needed to get the barrier down and stop Sendak, but he couldn’t help anyone if he was dead.  So Pidge ran, Rover singing little alarm tones as it zipped along beside him and Keith shouting over the comms (Allura was strangely silent, hopefully working on an alternate plan), staticking in and out as the signal changed.  Then a bolt from one of the sentry’s guns grazed a little too close as he rounded a corner, and the voice was gone.  Pidge was, once again, on his own. 

For lack of a better plan (it turned out to be a pretty good plan, all things considered), they ended up leading the sentrybots on a wild goose chase through the castle.  A couple of the arcs exploded, hopefully not damaging too much of anything besides the bots, and Pidge decided that any of Allura’s warnings about Altean tech were to be very closely heeded as he ran faster, blinking the bright spots out of his vision.  The invisible maze was found to be very effective against evil enemy robots; Pidge wished he could have stayed and watched but it seemed like there were always more. 

Pidge had fortunately already been in some of the vents, knowing how they were built and how they connected.  That combined with the tiny gauntlet computer and Rover’s rapid scanning kept them from getting lost. 

He almost fell down a deep ventshaft after getting his jetpack fried by a shot, but Rover caught and counterbalanced him until he could regain his grip on the wall.  The little bot helped the whole time, flashing brightly to distract the sentries, playing decoy so that most of the bolts fired flew between Pidge and Rover and didn’t hit either of them, or struck only glancing blows.  It provided a step and a handhold and a backup map and the reassurance that Pidge wasn’t totally on his own in this hundred-odds-to-one desperate rescue mission. 

If you asked, Pidge would want to say that Rover was the most loyal being he’d ever known.  But then he would think of Keith not giving up on his brother, of how he’d gotten thrown out of the Garrison to keep Katie from getting caught (and how he stayed on her side even after she did).  He would think of Lance getting injured to protect Coran, of Hunk going to a strange planet to find a crystal, even though he hated flying.  He would think of Shiro sacrificing himself to the arenas so that Matt wouldn’t die.  He would think of all of these people, being good and close and caring and loyal in ways he had never really known before, and he wouldn’t really know anymore.

Honestly, Pidge wasn’t particularly known for being loyal.  For his family, of course, he would do anything.  But he couldn’t help remembering meeting Lance and Hunk and immediately brushing them off, uncaring of anything about them even though they were supposed to be a team.  He was seeing it now, but maybe they’d always been his friends, even from the beginning.  Even when he wasn’t really a friend to them.  He’d make it up to them.  This time, Pidge would be there.  Of course, he said all this to Rover because there was nobody else there, but for the first time in her life, Katie was realizing that maybe she had more than just bots and her family to care about. 

Anyway.  All considerations about loyalty aside, Rover helped a lot.  Pidge was glad it was there, humming at her side like a familiar, close and attentive. 

They could do this, together. 

*

Sendak’s lieutenant – Higson? Hacksaw? Haxus! – was in the main control room, repowering the subpanels and totally unnoticing of Pidge as he crept along up a ladder on the edge of the bay.  He relayed information to the bridge and presumably Sendak, running through a series of startup tasks before finally reaching, “Powering up.”

“And up and up and up!” Pidge whispered, taking extra glee in the alarm that ran through the Galra’s body right before the explosive level of current did.  The shockwave missed the little Human and his even smaller drone, and Pidge imagined hang-gliding as he and Rover drifted down and landed smoothly on the catwalk. 

Haxus was still conscious as Pidge approached.  Pidge smiled viciously at the look of astonishment on his face.  “You’re one causing all this trouble?”  But his smug acknowledgement of being the absolute best troublemaker was cut off by his next words: “A child?”

“I’m not a _child_ ,” Pidge growled.  “I’m a Paladin of Voltron.”  _I am.  I want to find my family, I need to, but I have this too.  And I can’t leave it._

Haxus stood, and Pidge stepped back as the Galra drew a laser sword.  This was definitely going to be harder than the sentries. 

 _Ow.  I hate being right._   Pidge rolled over and regained his feet slowly, side and hip aching from being thrown into a wall by his Bayard line.  Haxus stalked towards him like a cat hunting its prey.  “Nowhere left to run, little Paladin,” he said, a dangerous smile on his face, “Nowhere left to hide.”

Pidge was staggering back, trying frantically to think of a plan that ended in victory.  He was up against an enemy twice his size and thrice his weight, in the open with no shadows or hiding spots or sneak attacks.  This didn’t look good. 

Suddenly, Rover popped up.  Not beside Pidge, hovering at his right side like a little metallic dog, but behind Haxus.  The droid fired a few shots, not powerful enough to injure the Galra but certainly startling him and distracting him from Pidge. 

And all Pidge needed was a distraction.  He ran forward and shot out his Bayard, looping it around one of Haxus’s ankles and pulling as hard as he could.  The Galra tripped and staggered, ending balanced just on the very edge of the turbine bay.  Pidge retracted his Bayard, raising it to fire again at his head, but Rover was faster.  The droid butted Haxus’s chest, pushing him out into the open fall. 

Pidge had always been fast; quick-thinking and quick-acting.  But the next few seconds played like he was trapped in honey, slowed in sap and unable to act. 

A hand shot out, fast and hard.  Claws locked around the shell casing of the droid, clinging with rage and desperation.  Rover’s forward cameras were facing Pidge.  It blinked little green lights at him, giving a soft little whistle, and then the drone powered off, and they fell. 

Pidge had always been fast, but now he wasn’t fast enough.  He couldn’t grab Rover back from the edge, couldn’t shake the little bot and shout at it to never do that again.  He couldn’t stab Haxus in the face for what he had done.  All he could do was sit at the edge of the bay, a broken jetpack on his back and a super-high-tech, useless computer on his gauntlet, staring into the dark of the fall with Haxus’s screams ringing in his ears and Rover’s lights echoing across his vision. 

A crackling in the radio startled Pidge so badly that he nearly lost his balance, almost falling too before jerking his body backwards onto the catwalk.  It was Sendak’s voice, saying something to Haxus but Pidge was suddenly to angry to hear his words clearly. 

Pidge hoped his fury came clear through the comms when he spoke, hissing into the microphone louder than he really had to.  “Haxus is gone.  And you’re next!”

 _You took something from me.  Ask the Garrison, Sendak – you’re going to regret this._  

The Galra was speaking, his voice growling through Pidge’s translator.  He… he wanted Pidge to turn himself in. 

 _As if.  You have a lot to learn about Humans, and about me in particular, Sendak._   “No way.  Never.”

Something changed.  Even through just radio, Pidge could hear Sendak’s voice take on a new tone, deeper and with a new level of growl deep in the consonants.  “Well, then.  Maybe your leader can convince you.”

Pidge’s blood froze.  He’d messed up.  Sendak was powerful and dangerous, and Shiro and Lance were his captives. 

Hearing Shiro’s voice was a heartbeat of reassurance, of _he’s still there_ , before –

“Pidge, don’t listen to him–”

Pidge had never heard someone scream like that.  It made his ears burn, cutting something deep in his chest.  Pidge fought to keep his fear pinned down, to force it into anger and determination.  He fought the tears down.  _You can’t give up now.  He needs you.  They all do.  Don’t fall now._  

“You can make it stop.” Shiro had stopped screaming, although Pidge could hear his ragged breathing beneath Sendak’s slimy words.  Of Lance, he could discern nothing.  “Turn yourself in, little Paladin.  His suffering is in your hands.”

_No, it’s not.  It’s in yours, and I am going to cut them right off.  You captured the Kerberos mission.  You imprisoned my father and brother and sent Shiro to fight in barbaric arenas._

**_This is all your fault._ ** _And I’m going to make you pay.  For what you did to my family, for everything you’ve ever done to Shiro.  You’re going to pay for it all._

*

Pidge crouched by the door to the bridge, feeling suddenly very alone.  Rover wasn’t here anymore (don’t think, don’t think about that, focus, _focus_ ), and Pidge realized again, stronger, that he was on his own.  Nobody was coming to save them.  If Pidge messed this up, Lance would die, Shiro would go back to the arenas, and Pidge would either be killed or something worse in the hands of the Galra.  There was no room for error.  He got this right, right now, or everything was over.  

He was close enough to hear Sendak talking, almost conversational.  He was so sure that Voltron was in their hands, that they had won.  He was impressed that Shiro had managed to escape.  He wanted to go to Earth, to see if all Humans were like this or if Shiro was just an exceptional specimen. 

_No you don’t.  You’ll never set foot on Earth as long as I have anything to say about it.  Oh, and also – yes.  Yes, we are.  And you’re going to live to regret it._

Time to go. 

Pidge held his breath, watching Sendak chase his hologram down the hall.  Hopefully, it would hold for long enough that Pidge could get Shiro loose and figure out how to shut down the bridge doors.  He’d never tested the range of the hologram, and he had no idea how it would hold up to whatever sensors and processors were in Sendak’s robotic eye. 

There was no time to lose.  Pidge skidded to a stop in front of Shiro, who was slumped down like a puppet with broken strings.  “Shiro, wake up!” he hissed, reaching for the cuffs that bound Shiro’s arms.  They must be special, able to resist the heat and strength of his metal arm.  “It’s me–” _Who are you?_ “– Pidge!  _Not Katie.  Not this time._  

Shiro stirred, eyes opening and focusing slowly on Pidge’s face.  “Come on, Shiro!  We need to–”

Then a sudden crushing force wrapped itself around Pidge’s body, lifting him high into the air.  Pidge could hardly breathe, shoulders twisted back and down in an unnatural pull, ribs pressed in like hard metal sardines against his lungs. 

“You really thought your little hologram trick would work with me?” Sendak laughed, shaking Pidge like a doll, the Green Paladin tiny like a gerbil clutched in one palm.  Pidge’s head whiplashed back to strike the metal of the hand behind him, although the helmet bounced off and shielded him from the worst of the impact.  He could barely breathe, barely think. 

This was it.  They had lost.  The Green Bayard was still in his right hand, but he couldn’t move his arms in their pin between Sendak’s fingers, couldn’t twist his wrist to strike Sendak with the electrified katar blade.  Pidge had failed, and now everything was over.  He was trapped, and they were all going to die. 

There was a crash and suddenly there was red and pink charging into the bridge.  Pidge had no idea how, but somehow they had made it past the castle’s particle barrier.  Maybe they would make it after all. 

“Stand back,” Sendak snarled, eyes on the new danger.  Keith had his Bayard out and fully-formed, but the second he twitched forward Sendak was squeezing even more tightly, pulling Pidge’s spine backwards and forcing the breath from his lungs.  He’d moved closer to Shiro, his natural arm ready with claws out.  The threat was open – attack, and I will kill one or both of them before your blade ever reaches me. 

What he didn’t count on was getting shot in the back, by the unconscious and severely-wounded Paladin no less. 

Sendak roared in pain and dropped Pidge.  He hit the ground hard and rolled away to the side, clearing the path for Shiro to inelegantly blind-charge Sendak, still handcuffed.  The Galra almost absently knocked him away, sending the Black Paladin crashing back into the wall near Lance’s limp form. 

Shiro’s attack, however, was immediately replaced by Keith.  Unbound, uninjured, armed, and furious. 

They clashed violently, Keith’s Bayard blade striking Sendak’s metal arm multiple times but struggling to reach flesh.  The Red Paladin fought with fury, pouring into his strikes all the static trapped fear and rage he’d felt while barricaded from the castle, from the people he wanted and needed to protect. 

But Sendak was huge and powerful.  He finally got a good grip on the Red Paladin and threw Keith across the room. 

Pidge saw the opportunity.  _Don’t touch the electrical arcs.  The explosion when a sentry shot one of the columns.  How the arc hadn’t reformed after the damage._   In a flash he’d bolted forward, slashing the bright glowing blade of his Bayard’s katar through the robot arm’s electric connection. 

The energy burst flung Pidge back, but the metal hand dropped with a limp clang to the floor as Keith shoved it off of him.  Sendak roared, in rage or pain or both Pidge didn’t know, and lashed out with his flesh arm.  Pidge got his shield up just in time to get thrown back across the room. 

But he didn’t need to be close to make a hit.  The Green Bayard snaked across the floor with a flashing hiss, wrapping around the Galra’s ankle and electrocuting him with green lightning.  Pidge took a sick satisfaction at the sound of his shriek.   _That’s for Shiro._  

The instant the green sparks dropped, Keith was back on the attack.  He got a hit or two in, but then Sendak grabbed his sword, holding the blade back with sheer force. 

Pidge was startled by the sound of Allura’s shout.  He’d almost forgotten she was there, but now he saw her, standing by a control panel and tapping frantic commands.  “Keith, now!” she cried, and Keith leapt up, kicking Sendak hard in the chest and dislodging the Galra’s grip. 

Keith fell one way, and Sendak fell the other.  And suddenly there was a particle barrier shimmering into existence between them, trapping Sendak inside alone.  Pidge knew the particle barriers, knew how powerful they were (how the castle’s own barrier could have led to their defeat today, if things hadn’t gone exactly this way).  There was no way Sendak would get out of that, especially with just one unmodified arm. 

It was over. 

*

Pidge didn’t let his hands shake as he carefully cut through Shiro’s cuffs with his Bayard.  He helped his leader stand, understanding how he was injured and feeling sick at the knowledge. 

Keith was with Lance, gently maneuvering the Blue Paladin upright.  They were talking quietly, and from the smile on Lance’s face and the baffled but pleased expression on Keith’s, it was going to be something Pidge would have to bother Keith about later, just to get the full story and have proper teasing material. 

The castle was weak but stable, and between the four of them they were able to get Lance into a healing pod.  Allura had reassured them all that he would be fine within a day, although even she couldn’t keep herself from stealing worried glances at him every few minutes.  She busied herself at the command center, running checks on the castle’s damaged systems. 

That left Pidge, Keith, and Shiro standing near Lance’s pod.  Shiro’s hand was warm on Pidge’s shoulder.  He couldn’t help but lean into it, although he tried to keep from putting too much of his weight against Shiro, still painfully aware of what Sendak had done to him to try to draw Pidge out. 

“I can’t help but feel that you were meant to be a part of our team,” Shiro said, a rare real smile on his face as he gazed down at his captain’s child.  “But I understand if you want to leave.”  He could remember Matt, and Sam, and now that he fully remembered Katie he knew that she was as determined as a comet, and that nothing could stop her once she set her mind to something.  Sendak had learned that the hard way.  That also meant that there would be no keeping her in the castle, in Voltron, if she didn’t want to be here. 

He understood her reason for wanting to go – he almost wanted to go with her.  Much of his memory was still fog and blank spaces, but he remembered enough of Matt to long for his presence.  He wanted Sam back, too.  A kind, encouraging father figure – and someone in charge.  An adult.  Shiro knew that he was the “grown up” here, even if he was only a few years older than the others.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to be.  But he also knew that if Pidge left, they would go alone.  He couldn’t leave, no matter how much he wished he could go. 

Pidge didn’t look up for a while.  Rover was gone.  Matt and Sam were missing, and no matter how much Pidge hated to admit it, Keith was right: he really didn’t have much information on what might have happened to them or where they might be.  His best resources were right here: the Green Lion, the castle, Voltron.  These people. 

“Dad used to tell me how close he was with his crew members,” he said finally.  “They were like family.” He could feel the change in Shiro’s body, surprise maybe.  Either he’d forgotten how close he’d really been with the other two members of the _Persephone_ mission, or he had never fully realized how Sam Holt had all but adopted him.  “I think I understand what he was talking about now.”

Because here was the thing: Pidge was not a social person.  He didn’t like interacting with people – for the most part it was awkward at best and downright uncomfortable at worst.  He’d never had any friends.  But he’d also found that being alone not by choice was scary, and lonely – even more than those first days at the Garrison.  Being on his own in open space with no backup and nobody with him (not even Rover, now) sounded honestly kind of awful.  He’d much rather be alone in some weird lab or back room of the castle, Keith lurking nearby and Shiro just a shout away, than truly and deeply on his own like that. 

Pidge wanted to find his family.  But he was realizing that he might have another sort of family right here, and he wasn’t going to leave them either.  Shiro wanted Matt and Sam back just as much as Pidge did.  Keith had never failed in his support, back at the Garrison and now here in space.  Lance and Hunk had no idea about any of this, but Pidge was beginning to realize that they might have been on his side the whole time, without him even realizing. 

“I’m staying with you guys.  Let’s stop Zarkon, for all our families.”

Shiro hugged him, relief visible all over his body.  Keith bumped his shoulder, a rare look of affection on his face.  “Good to have you back on the team,” he said quietly. 

Pidge could only smile.  _I think I’m really happy to be here._  

 

* * *

 

Shiro and Pidge wouldn’t get into the healing pods, and it was making Keith irrationally angry.  He’d just spent the past few hours terrified out of his mind that he was going to lose the two people he cared about most in one swoop, and now that he’d gotten them back safe but battered, _they wouldn’t do any damn thing about it._  

“Shiro, you really should go,” Pidge tried again.  He sat on one of the medical examination tables in the infirmary, swinging his legs off the edge.  “You were tortured.  You got _electrocuted_.”

“Pot, meet kettle,” Shiro said with a tiny wry smile.  He settled more into his chair with the air of someone who really, really did not want to get up.  “I saw how Sendak grabbed you, and I know firsthand how powerful that arm of his is.  You should be in a pod just as much as I should.”

Keith hid his flinch.  He’d sat against the castle barrier for hours, while his brother was being tortured and Pidge was being chased through the vents by sentrybots, doing _nothing._   Now here he was, elbow-deep in Altean medical supplies, trying to patch them up after it was all over.  The two of them were throwing each other under the bus without really trying to defend themselves, and Keith was too stressed and exasperated for this. 

He knew why they really weren’t going.  He could tell Shiro feared the pods, had watched how his brother’s body had tensed up at the sight and still not fully relaxed.  He knew that Pidge was on edge, that he’d just taken the castle back almost single-handedly from near-certain loss, and that he couldn’t really process that it was all over now. 

He knew that all three of them were still far too on edge.  But although Keith’s medical skills were less than ideal, it was something he could do, and he needed to do it.  Needed to know that they really were okay and alive and safe.  They knew it, too. 

There wasn’t much that could be done.  Keith found something that looked like antibiotic ointment and gently rubbed it onto the faint marks of electrical burns on Shiro’s neck, back, and side.  He and Pidge had very carefully not reacted when Shiro had finally, slowly, removed his shirt and revealed more scars than should ever be on a single person.  Keith had pushed down the horror for a later time, and focused on cleaning and bandaging the most recent burns.  He’d get upset about this later, now was not the time. 

Once Shiro’s shirt was back on he seemed to finally relax.  He wouldn’t lie down on the medical tables (more things to worry about at a time that was _not now_ ), but when Keith and Pidge dragged a pile of blankets out of a cabinet and piled them on the floor, he grudgingly lay down and was snoring in minutes. 

“Your turn,” Keith turned to Pidge. 

Pidge stared right back.  “You got thrown, too,” he said, “you need to get checked if I do.”

“I didn’t get half-crushed,” Keith said flatly.  “I’ll put cream on the bruises later.  But Sendak had you, Pidge, I saw.  When I ran in there and saw Shiro and Lance on the floor and you in his hand like that, I – I thought I was too late.  I thought that I had finally made it in there and that I was going to lose you all anyway.”

Pidge bit his lip, not meeting Keith’s eyes.  Finally, he sighed.  “Fine.  But when I’m done, I’m checking your back, and your arms.  You got thrown pretty hard.”

“Done.” As Pidge began to wriggle gingerly out of his armor and undersuit, Keith was _so glad_ that Allura was busy talking with Coran and Hunk about the crystal that was on its way back to the castle, and that there was nobody in the room except for Shiro, who was asleep and already knew anyway.  This was not a conversation that needed to be had right now. 

Pidge’s shoulders, sides, and back were painted with purple-black like watercolors, green edging in in a way that absolutely did not belong, not even on the Green Paladin.  “Jesus, Pidge,” Keith breathed, staring, “are you _sure_ nothing’s broken?”

“I’m sure,” Pidge snapped.  He shivered.  The medbay was not a warm room, near as it was to the cryopods, and he had hardly ever let so much skin be bare since he'd first entered the Garrison under a name that was not his own.  Shiro, too, but they had very different secrets to conceal in their skins. 

Keith’s hands were rough but warm, feeling carefully along bones and muscles and tendons, ensuring that Pidge wasn’t lying about any deeper damage, before gently smoothing the strongest healing balm he’d been able to find over the marks. 

Slowly, the tension faded from Pidge’s shoulders.  They weren’t out of the woods yet – Lance was still in a pod and the castle was still missing a crystal – but there was a security here that they had all desperately missed during the last few hours.  It was just the three of them.  No enemies, no secrets.  It was a familiarity that was deeply cherished, and they all relished in it despite all the scars and marks. 

 _Sorry, Matt,_ Pidge thought, looking from the brothers, through the door and across the hall to where Lance slept in a healing pod, waiting for Hunk and Coran to return.  Pidge had removed his armor, but the Green Bayard lay within reach, and Keith’s Red Bayard hung at his belt.  Pidge couldn’t leave.  Not now.  He wasn’t going to give up, but he wasn’t going to abandon this part of his family either.  _You’re going to have to wait just a little longer._  

Keith wouldn’t leave Pidge’s side for the next few hours, and they fell asleep leaning on one another.  When Shiro jerked awake a while later, his fear would fade almost immediately as he looked over and saw them both there, safe and sleeping.  He would even fall back asleep himself, the ache of the burns soothed by the medicine and his brother’s soft touch, the sound of Sendak’s voice drowned out by Pidge muttering in his sleep. 

The castle was quiet.  It had been close, but they had won. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a pretty hard chapter to write. i superlove pidge, but i don’t always feel that i write her (him, for now) very well and especially in scenarios like this. also, i’ve been dealing with some alarmingly intense (for me) paralytic rage for a while now, so… if that bled into pidge’s feelings about the garrison and sendak, um. art imitates life, i guess? (essentially i’ve got my own version of iverson irl and i want to feed him to a wolverine). also struggling with a sudden lack of a social life and being alone more than i kind of want to be, which is weird for such an introvert as me. essentially i’m having a weird life and projected more than i meant to. sorry, pidge. 
> 
>  
> 
> final note: fuck this fuck this fuck this i’m bringing rover back


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp. half a chapter again, folks. hopefully i'll get the last bit (some more detailed conversations that i wanted to give some attention to) done and posted by the end of monday sorry. and some editing for this current section, because ack. 
> 
> also: rearranged a bit about rover because i decided it fit better here, so if something looks like a double of before don't worry about it
> 
> edit: finished the chapter, have posted. thanks for your patience

Sendak’s attack had nearly cost them everything, but in the end Voltron had prevailed.  The castle was pretty seriously damaged and Lance spent a day in a healing pod, but finally things were starting to return to normal. 

Everything finally shifted back to _okay_ when Lance came out of the pod.  Admittedly, they’d all been a bit distracted arguing about the length of seconds versus ticks, but the important part was that Lance was okay.  He’d survived the bomb and Sendak’s takeover, and judging by how quickly he reverted to flirting badly with Allura, he was fine now. 

They caught the Blue Paladin up on the events of the last two days (had it only been half a day that had nearly cost them everything?  Keith had felt like he’d spent a century staring at the castle’s barrier, their greatest shield turned upon them) – Sendak, Pidge’s sabotage, Hunk and Coran’s adventures in search of a new castle crystal, all of it. 

Sendak himself was in a cryopod.  Keith had wanted to kill him outright, Pidge right there with him, but Allura thought he might have information.  He was too dangerous to leave anywhere or just keep within a barrier for very long, so he was frozen for now.  Keith always kept his knife on him, but he checked for it more often now.  He hated the idea of an enemy so close, of keeping Sendak alive and nearby after everything he had done, after what he’d done to Shiro.  But they had to obey the Princess, so Sendak stayed in a pod and nothing more was done (for now). 

Lance was fine, but he remembered essentially nothing after the start of the party with the Arusians.  He listened with amazement bordering on horror to the summary of the following events, but absolutely refused to believe anything Keith had to say about any kind of “bonding moments.”  It was clearly at least partly Lance’s playfulness mixed in with whatever this rivalry thing he had in his head about Keith, but Keith had a hard enough time with attachments and forming connections with people that it did hurt a little to be so quickly brushed off. 

He’d feared the worst for all of them, his brother and his closest friend most of all, but Keith had surprised himself with how much he had worried over Lance.  At least Shiro and Pidge had been responsive.  Lance had been on the verge of death even before Sendak got in and took over, and at one point Keith had been almost certain that the new Blue Paladin was going to die.  This weird mystery rivalry aside, Keith was finding himself liking the other, and he was relieved that Lance was okay.  He didn’t have to remember the bonding moment.  Keith did.  That would be good enough for now.  They were both alive to have more. 

Lance was mostly done with his post-pod meal, feeding bits of goo to the mice.  He seemed to be running through the timeline, putting the pieces he hadn’t been conscious for together, and suddenly he glanced up with a puzzled look.  “Something’s missing,” he said slowly, looking around. 

“Something’s – what?” Hunk had been glued to his friend’s side since the moment he’d emerged from the pod.  "What’s missing?"

Lance’s sharp eyes flicked across the room, finally settling on Pidge, who looked both startled and confused at the attention.  “Where’s Rover?” Lance asked.  “I mean, whatever got into the control room definitely wasn’t Rover, so where is the little guy?”

Pidge’s face had drained of all color.  Keith glanced at him sharply, confusion swirling.  He hadn’t noticed.  He’d been so worried about Shiro, about Pidge, about Lance on death’s door and Hunk wandering the stars, that he hadn’t once noticed this whole time that Rover wasn’t with Pidge.  It had never occurred to him to think about the bot, or wonder where it might have gone.  He thought hard and could only think of bits of Pidge talking to or about Rover during the sabotage efforts, before Keith had gotten into the castle.  After that, there was nothing.

“Rover is gone,” Pidge said very quietly, and the room was suddenly filled with a heavy roaring silence.  “I was fighting Haxus.  I wasn’t fast enough.  Rover knocked him off the edge, but… it fell too.  I couldn’t get to it.”

Keith didn’t really get it, but he knew that little bot had been important to Pidge.  He’d known it was a miracle that they’d all survived the invasion, although it had been close, especially for Lance.  Now, though, it turned out that not everyone had. 

Lance looked shocked; they all did.  “Oh man,” he said quietly.  “Pidge, I… I’m sorry.  I didn’t know.”

“None of us knew,” Keith rasped.  He couldn’t move, couldn’t reach out.  He didn’t know how to help with this.  Pidge had had a strong attachment to the bot.  This was the first real loss Voltron had felt, organic or not.  For it to have happened while Pidge was alone, fighting a seemingly unwinnable battle against a powerful dangerous enemy and losing the only ally he had in that time, must have been deeply painful. 

Keith couldn’t move, but Shiro could.  He reached out and wrapped his arms gently around Pidge, letting the Green Paladin curl into his body like he could hide from what had happened there. 

The others looked on with empathy, but they couldn’t do much to help.  Nobody could.  Somewhat forced, the conversation turned, and Lance teased Hunk about his interest in the Balmeran he’d met (in Hunk’s words, she wasn’t his girlfriend.  She was just a rock he met that he admired very much.  Keith was beyond amused). 

All rock-girlfriend jokes aside, Hunk seemed more motivated about this than Keith had ever seen him.  The anxiety and fear that had so frequently nearly paralyzed the Yellow Paladin was burned away like mist in sunlight in the face of his new determination.  He was realizing what it meant to be a Paladin.  Keith, with his protective streak a mile wide, could understand the feeling. 

Then it happened.  Somewhere in Hunk’s psych-up speech, he uttered the sentence, “It’s time to man up.”  Keith watched Pidge’s face drop, and then watched as a sudden resolve surfaced.  In a flash, he realized what was about to happen, and could only brace for the coming chaos. 

“Wait.” The others paused, and Pidge took a deep breath, resolving himself for what he needed to say.  “I need to say this.  It might… this might change how you all think about me, but I want you all to know.  Just so there are no more secrets anymore: I can’t ‘man up.’”

Then, to every living being in the castle, Pidge said, “I’m a girl.”

In the dead silence that followed, she sputtered.  “I – I mean, I know ‘man up’ is a figure of speech, obviously I don’t have to actually _be_ a man to ‘man up,’ I just–”

She was saved from burying herself any more by Lance’s loud squawk.  “You’re a _girl?_   _How?_ ”

Allura looked a little smug.  “I've known for some time,” she said with a pleased _I-got-it-right_ tone, “but I'm glad you've shared it with everyone.”

 _You think_ you _knew for a while,_ Keith thought, fighting to keep a blank face.  _Try knowing for_ years.

“I figured,” Hunk agreed. 

 _Quick, play along._   “Oh, yeah, me too,” Keith said, his voice slightly choked.  Pidge shot him a look that could wither a cactus. 

“Wait, were we supposed to think you were a boy?” Coran asked with a confused expression.  Keith was glad that Coran was here and not in the Garrison.  Garrison generals were evidently much stupider than Altean advisor-mechanic-engineers, and Pidge’s false-identity plan had only worked because of that. 

They began to move on, preparing to launch the castleship and start traveling to the Balmera and Hunk’s not-girlfriend-rock.  Lance just sat there like a duck, open-mouthed and mumbling, “Pidge is a girl and the castle is a ship?  How long have I been out?”

As they worked, preparing the bridge for takeoff, Keith decided to jump in too.  _No more secrets._  

“I lied,” he said, and all eyes turned to him with confusion.  Lance looked a little terrified and muttered, _“please don’t also be a girl, I can’t handle this many surprises so soon after my near-death revival.”_

“I didn’t just figure out that Pidge was a girl.  I’ve known her for a long time – back before Kerberos and everything.” This was mostly directed toward Hunk and Lance, as the Alteans had little understanding of what had led the Humans to space.  The Legs of Voltron stared at him in astonishment.  “I’ve known the whole time.  We broke into Garrison files together, and when we both got kicked out and banned, I helped her sneak back in as a boy.  We were looking for our brothers, and for Pidge’s dad.  I knew who she was, and we worked together to try and find out what the Garrison was hiding.” He glanced at Shiro, who looked both touched and amused.  “We had no idea what we were going to find.”

“ _You_ had no idea?” Hunk squawked.  “You – I–” he sighed.  “Okay.  Is that all the secrets?  I’d like my head to stop spinning now.   Also,” he added almost menacingly, “I’m going to have a lot of questions later.  I want to focus on the Balmera, but, like…” the Yellow Paladin trailed off, looking puzzled and uncertain.  “I’ll figure this out later.  For now, we have a Balmera to save.”

“And a girlfriend,” Pidge snickered, and Keith rolled his eyes. 

The others may have somehow guessed that Pidge was a girl (so these five people were essentially smarter than the entire Garrison combined, that was going to be a source of savage amusement for a long time), but apparently she and Keith had been pretty good at the other secret.  Even Shiro had seemed a little surprised at some of the details, and Keith had to wonder how much he clearly remembered from before Kerberos. 

Then the lights shifted and seats rose up from the bridge floor, color-coded of course.  The Paladins settled into their spots (Pidge was instantly enamored with the little screens that popped up in front of the chairs and immediately began messing with everything), still chatting, and Allura and Coran began the castle’s flight.

* * *

Reaching the Balmera was going to take a while.  Eventually, people wandered off from the bridge – Lance and Hunk to the kitchen (Hunk wanted to make food ahead of time for their visit, mentioning some alarming things about cave grubs), Shiro to the training deck, and Keith and Pidge to talk.  All the secrets were out in the open, but there were still some things that were best discussed alone. 

It had been too close.  Sendak had nearly won.  They were the Arms, the protectors of Voltron.  They couldn’t let that happen, not ever again. 

“If you hadn’t gotten there exactly when you did, we would have lost.” Pidge was staring at some blank point on the wall, face shuttered of emotion no matter how hard Keith tried to read her.  “I messed up.  I was so worried about Shiro, and Lance, that I didn’t pay enough attention.  I assumed my hologram would work for long enough, and he caught me.”

Keith wasn’t sure he would ever forget the sight.  “I still see it,” he said quietly.  “I finally got in there, finally reached you, and Shiro looked so bad and I thought Lance was dead and you were _in Sendak’s hand_ and I couldn’t do anything, because if I moved he would have killed you all.  If Lance hadn’t woken up and shot him, I don’t know what we would have done.”  He’d never felt so helpless as he had in that moment, except maybe in those hours pressed against the barrier and praying to every star he’d ever seen that his family would be alright. 

“And the mice were the ones that got the barrier down!” Pidge exclaimed, the anger in her voice teetering on the edge of remembered fear.  “I didn’t even get it open!  Haxus found me, and Sendak tortured Shiro and caught me, and Rover _died!_   And if you and Allura hadn’t gotten there right when you did, they would have killed us and taken Voltron straight to Zarkon.” Her hands were shaking, eyes glittering with unshed tears.  “I’m never letting this happen again.”

“ _We’re_ never letting this happen again,” Keith corrected gently, and Pidge looked up at him almost in surprise.  “We share this, like we have everything else.  We’ll keep them safe.”

“We’ll never let anything touch them,” Pidge murmured, and when she leaned towards him Keith leaned right back, wrapped his arms around her. 

It had been close.  It had been so close, and Keith knew it would happen again.  They were only just beginning to understand what they were up against, and the odds weren’t good.  But Keith would be damned if he didn’t put up the fight of his life.  He finally had his family back, finally had people he cared for like he rarely ever had before, and he wasn’t going to let that go so easily.  Pidge would do the same. 

It would take a lot.  Keith was going to have to spend every free minute in the training deck, putting his purpose as the Sword of Voltron to good use.  Pidge, he knew, would be impossible to drag away from her computer, searching and planning and designing new tools and weapons.  The Galra were very big and Pidge was very small, and she had always been strongest in the shadows. 

Voltron was the universe’s best chance at freedom, and the Arms were not going to let anything endanger it. 

* * *

Keith didn’t know much about trust.  He trusted very few, and everyone else was automatically on the “distrust and suspicion” list.  So he wasn’t sure what to think of the strange little crew of shipwreckers they found on a small abandoned moon.  Rolo had an easy voice, and Nyma moved smooth and fluid, and Beezer was a robot so Keith didn’t fully know what to make of it.  But Rolo’s mouth sometimes twisted in a strange way, just for an instant, and Nyma’s eyes were as cold as outer space.  And Keith really didn’t know what to think of robots, or how to trust them. 

Hunk didn’t trust any of these new people.  Maybe he was right, or maybe he was just in a hurry to get to the Balmera.  Lance was trusting, but from what Keith had seen Lance was generally trusting and so was not a great baseline.  Allura was all for working with them.  Pidge would normally be some sort of reference point (maybe not the best one, since she was just as distrusting as Keith, but hey he did what he could), but she was completely enamored with Beezer and so was totally useless. 

(For a moment, Keith wondered if Beezer was acting as some sort of rebound bot for her, after Rover.  Then he decided firmly to not think about that.)

Shiro seemed to be accepting enough of the three.  That was what decided it, in the end.  Keith followed his brother’s lead, and didn’t vocally side with Hunk when the Yellow Paladin voiced his displeasure at being stuck here fixing some broken cruiser instead of continuing to travel to the Balmera, and his suspicion of their new companions. 

Lance and Nyma wandered off pretty quickly.  Keith wondered how long it would take for that to bite Lance in the butt.  He was bad at human interaction and probably worse at aliens, but there was something about Nyma’s eyes, her painted smile, that made his spine want to curl back, to creep away from her and escape when she wasn’t looking.  Hopefully Lance wouldn’t do anything stupid, they’d only just gotten him back from the last near-death experience. 

While the two of them were off doing god knew what god knew where, Rolo talked with Shiro and Allura, and Keith hung around, listening. 

Rolo was missing a leg from his time as a prisoner of the Galra.  Keith watched his brother closely for a while after that, but Shiro seemed okay and almost relaxed more, as if reassured by the presence of someone who had experienced something like what he had.  Rolo described the various (tiny, scattered, struggling) resistances, and the way the Empire was laid out, with Zarkon at the center.  This section of space belonged to someone named Sendak. 

“Oh, we’ve met,” Keith said, unable to hide the vicious edge to his tone.  He would be happier if Sendak was dead, but for now at least the Galra was frozen in a locked pod, his sentries and lieutenant dead, his arm gone.  Keith would think about that, and remember when he’d kicked Sendak into the encaging barrier, the feeling of victory, _finally_.  That was one threat against Voltron dealt with.  

(Only ten thousand left to go…) From Rolo’s words, the battle against Zarkon was only just beginning. 

Things went pretty quickly after that.  Something changed in Rolo’s behavior like the flick of a switch, and in moments he and Beezer had taken off to test their ship’s repairs.  Except they didn’t come back. 

Neither did Lance. 

Lance had lost the Blue Lion to a pretty girl, and the three smugglers had taken off, presumably heading straight to the Empire to deliver the Lion in hopes of receiving a significant reward.  Voltron, of course, had a few choice words to say about that. 

Keith was honestly pretty proud of his flying in that asteroid belt.  He and Red caught up to the cruiser in ticks, and once he’d gotten rid of their guns it was a piece of cake to bring the ship back to the others like a cat playing fetch.  And he got to tease Lance in the process, which was definitely a bonus.  The fact that Lance took the teasing like teasing, and not a personal insult?  The fact that he did, finally, acknowledge their bonding moment, even if it was just an attempt to coax Keith into going and getting him?  Even better. 

They left the three on the moon, truly stranded and with a properly broken ship (Red wasn’t sorry).  Shiro was quiet and vanished quickly after boarding the castle, hopefully to think and not to freak out.  Lance wandered off to sulk (Keith knew the Blue Paladin had pretty bad luck with girls, but this was apparently a new low), and Hunk went to bother Allura about making the castle go faster. 

Pidge sat in her green bridge chair, poking at the screens with significantly less energy than she’d had earlier.  Keith would be willing to bet his Lion that she was upset about Beezer (not really – he’d seen how that had gone for Lance.  But he was pretty sure).  The robot had betrayed them just as much as Rolo and Nyma had, but Pidge had clearly been very interested in the cyberunit and had not taken well to its sudden departure. 

Keith watched her, shoulders slumped and hands slow, and made a sudden decision. 

Pidge had said Rover fell with Haxus, into the pit beneath the energy turbines.  They… hadn’t dealt with that yet, probably hoping that Coran had some kind of mystery cleaning robots that would handle the actual dead body that was lying somewhere in the castle, but now Keith had an idea.  He had no idea what condition the drone would be in, especially after such a fall.  But he knew two mechanics who were both very good at their work and quite attached to Pidge.  

At least they could trust Rover.  If everyone they met was going to be like Rolo and Nyma, able to turn on them at the drop of a thermal pipe, then they needed all the allies they could get. 

If one of those allies was a little bot that had already sacrificed itself once to save a Paladin, why shouldn’t they put some effort into getting it back? 

(And if it would make Pidge happy, that was all the more reason to find it and fix it, and soon.)

* * *

“I’m sorry.”

Lance and Hunk looked at each other, confusion shared in their eyes.  Pidge stood in front of them, staring at the ground and looking… kind of like a storm in a teacup, really.  There was a lot of emotion in his – her – eyes and body language, tightly contained but nearly bursting at the seams. 

“I lied to you.  I’ve been lying since the day we met.  I wasn’t who I said I was, and I kept a lot from you.  I kept everything from you. 

“I was a bad teammate.  Back at the Garrison, I mean.  I never cared about our crew.  I wasn’t supposed to be there, and I was only a communications officer because it made it easier for me to get into Garrison computers – if I’d gone as myself, I would have wanted to be a pilot.  Just like you, Lance.” She glanced up, meeting the Blue Paladin’s eyes for an instant with a tiny smile.  Then it dropped and she curled back in on herself. 

“I’m so sorry.  I lied at the Garrison, and then when Shiro came back everything happened so fast and then we were all in space.  I don’t really know why I didn’t tell you then, you couldn’t have told Iverson then even if you wanted to.  I just… didn’t feel like I could say it.  The secret had gone on so long.  And Shiro didn’t even remember me at the beginning, so Keith was the only one who knew.”

“You know,” Lance said, “the rest is fine.  Like, I’m a little upset that you didn’t tell us, but I get it.  The whole thing is crazy and wild and I’m still trying to get my head around it, but the only part I can’t deal with is that Mullet knew the whole freaking time!”  Any idea that he might actually be angry was washed away by the teasing grin on his face. 

“I had no idea Keith could keep a secret like that,” Hunk mused.  “I mean, you, I get.  You’re the master of secrets.  But Keith is just so…”

“Keith,” Pidge filled in, rolling her eyes in agreement and relaxing slightly. 

“He’s just, you know, _there_ ,” Hunk said.  “I wouldn’t think he kept any kind of secret.  Sure, maybe there’s stuff he doesn’t say, because he doesn’t talk a lot and isn’t like super open or anything, but he’s not a _secretive_ person.  You guys really got it with that.” He shrugged.  “I would never have guessed that you’d known each other for literal years.  At most, I just thought you’d clicked really fast, but we chalked that up to, like, an Arms bond or something.”

“Man,” Lance said, stretching his arms high above his head, “I could never in a million years pretend that I didn’t know Hunk.  That must have been so weird.”

Pidge nodded.  “It was,” he said – _she_ said, jeez this was going to take some adjustment.  “But we thought it was the best plan, and so we just stuck to it.”

“Okay, but hang on,” Hunk said as he leaned forward.  “Now we need the whole story.  Back then, I just thought you were just a really angry person and that you and Iverson just rubbed the wrong way.  But now – how much di the Garrison know about what happened to the Kerberos mission?  I remember seeing that on TV, how awful it was.  How did you know?  What did they tell you?”

“Nothing.” The flash of anger in Pidge’s eyes made both Hunk and Lance shiver.  “They wouldn’t tell us anything.  My dad and brother were gone, but I knew something was off.  I knew they weren’t dead.  And when I started looking, things didn’t add up.  There was restricted footage that showed the _Persephone_ still on Kerberos, with no damage.  Pilot error was a fucking lie.  A bad one, too – Shiro’s a better pilot than that and we knew it.”

Lance nodded.  “That was always the weird part.  I didn’t know any details about any of it, but I was as big a fan of Shiro as anyone at the Garrison–” he ignored Hunk’s badly-suppressed cough of _thebiggestfanboy_ , “– so I just kind of had to accept it as an awful tragedy and try to move on.  But it always seemed kind of off, that Shirogane Takashi would crash his own ship, no matter the circumstances.”

“It was the Garrison’s first mistake,” Pidge agreed.  “So I started to go in and try to get into labs or offices and dig around for more pieces.  I was pretty good, but sometimes I would get caught, or it would be a near miss. 

“Then I met Keith.”  Pidge’s eyes were distant with memory.  “We knew each other a little bit, because Matt and Shiro have been best friends for years, basically since they both started at the Garrison.  We didn’t really get along, though.  But once Matt and Shiro disappeared, we both knew something was off and wanted to find out what. 

“Keith started helping me get in and would stand watch while I looked through files.  We’d go over data together.  That’s when we started getting close.  We were the only two who knew that Matt and Dad and Shiro weren’t dead.”

“What a way to form a bond,” Hunk murmured as Lance nodded. 

Pidge shrugged.  “Forged in fire, I guess?  But then we almost got caught.  Keith tried to keep me from being found by… punching Iverson in the face.” She sighed. 

Lance and Hunk burst out laughing.  _“Seriously?”_ Lance cried.  “ _That’s_ how Keith got kicked out of the Garrison?”

Pidge’s smile dropped.  “Yeah.  I always told him there was probably a better way, that it wasn’t worth him getting expelled.  He wanted to be a pilot so badly, and he threw it all away so that I wouldn’t get in trouble for digging around where I wasn’t supposed to.

“Then I got caught anyway.  I was on Iverson’s computer and he came back from his meeting early.  I was banned from all Garrison property, effective immediately.  We were both locked out. 

“And that’s when I became Pidge Gunderson.”

Lance shook his head slowly.  “This is crazy.  You got banned, so you just… came back, as a different person?”

“Yep.”

“Man, that’s crazy.  Kinda scary, really.”

“It was,” Pidge said quietly.  “I couldn’t talk to my mom almost ever – why would Pidge Gunderson have any communication with the wife and mother of the missing astronauts?  I talked to Keith a lot, but he was out in the desert and couldn’t get into the Garrison no matter what happened to me.  I was on my own.”

“And then you met us,” Hunk reminded her with a smile. 

“And then I met you,” Pidge agreed softly.  She bit her lip.  “And I lied to you from the moment we met.  I… you weren’t supposed to mean anything to me.  Keith kept worrying that you were going to figure me out, that you would get too close.  I pushed you away every day, and I made our team a lot worse because I couldn’t communicate with you or let you in.  Then we came to space and became Paladins, and I still didn’t say anything.  I just kept going. 

“But now you know.  That’s all the secrets.  I’m a girl, and my father and brother were on the Kerberos mission.  Keith and I worked together at the Garrison to figure out what was going on, and then after we bot got kicked out I became Pidge and went back.  And I joined your team.  And then we went to space and became the primary defense against a massive, incredibly powerful evil intergalactic empire.”

“How weird are our lives now that the first parts are the confusing ones,” Lance sighed. 

“I’m still trying get over the fact that you’re related to Sam and Matt Holt,” Hunk mumbled, pressing his face into his hands.  “They’re _famous._   You’re related to _famous people_ , Pidge.”

“Superstars,” Pidge agreed with a grin. 

They were all quiet for a while, just sitting together.  “I guess I get why you wanted to leave so bad,” Lance said, staring pensively at his hands.  “You still needed to find your brother.  You still do.”

“I’ll find him,” Pidge said firmly.  “But I won’t find him out on my own in open space.  It’ll be better if I can use Voltron’s resources.  And…” she hesitated, then steeled herself and plowed on.  “I want to find them, and I’m going to, but I guess I don’t really want to leave you guys either.”

“Aw, Pidge!” Lance cried as Hunk cooed and tugged Pidge in for a hug, which she reciprocated with a grumble but absolutely no reluctance.  “You really do care!”

“I do.” Pidge’s face was pressed into Hunk’s arm, but her tone had changed.  Slowly, she drew back enough to be able to look at both of them, though she didn’t fully let go of the Yellow Paladin.  “I do care.  I care so much it scares me. 

“I thought you were going to die, Lance.  I thought that you were going to die and it would be my fault.  The bomb was a drone like Rover, that’s how it got in.  The Galra cloned my drone’s signature, and it came in and destroyed the crystal and almost killed you and Coran.  Then they got in and shut the castle down, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to get them out, that the castle would fly away and you would die and Keith and Allura would be left on Arus forever.”

She leaned against Hunk with an almost severe pressure.  “I thought you would come back with the crystal to an empty field.  Or that you wouldn’t come back at all.  I was so afraid that you would disappear in the stars like everyone else I’ve cared about.

“I realized that I’d lied to you both, from the start, about everything, and I realized that I cared about you and I didn’t want you to die or disappear.”

Pidge was trembling now.  “I was alone in the castle, alone against Sendak, and I just kept thinking about how if I failed, you would both die.  And I really, really didn’t want that to happen.”

“And we didn’t,” Lance said gently, rubbing Pidge’s back.  “We’re okay.  I survived, and Hunk got the crystal and a girlfriend to boot.” Hunk groaned exaggeratedly at the tease but didn’t say anything, focusing on keeping his arms around Pidge, letting her lean into him in a way she never had before. 

“We’re okay,” Lance reminded her. 

Pidge let out a breath, letting the shaking fade slowly from her hands and shoulders.  “You’re okay,” she murmured.  “We’re okay.”

Something felt clearer between them now.  The Green Paladin wasn’t keeping the others out.  They were closer now, free of secrets and lies.  The bonds were only growing stronger. 

* * *

The castle would reach the Balmera in a few hours.  For now, just enough time remained for everyone to get some sleep before making landfall (Balmera-fall?). 

Pidge had told Keith about talking to the Legs.  Now everyone was on the same page.  They wouldn’t have to guard their words, have to remember what was real and what was fabricated, which story was current for which person. 

They lay quietly in the dark.  Pidge’s computer was closed, the screen turned off for once.  Keith’s knife rested in its sheath on the desk beside Pidge’s glasses. 

 _No more secrets_.  Now everyone knew about the shared past the Arms had kept hidden, and it felt like a weight had been lifted.  Latently, Keith realized he had never known Pidge without having to keep secrets.  Pidge had been _created_ on secrets.  From the start, there had often been words they’d had to keep held, pieces of themselves and each other that they’d had to hide.  Now, at last, the sky felt open, and they both felt light as air. 

Neither Keith nor Pidge were used to friends.  They hadn’t even liked each other when they’d first met.  Keith had been too awkward and aggressive, Katie too reclusive and prickly, both too smart in their own ways, too wary of opening themselves up.  They weren’t used to friends, and they weren’t used to trust, not beyond their families and each other. 

That was all changing now.  Now, suddenly, there were friends – more than they’d ever known before.  There was trust, too – heavy, but a good kind of heavy like a thick blanket. 

It was all very new and different.  It was good.  They liked it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok but i still laughed every time i reread the Reveal Scene. i'd totally forgotten about it, but it's now definitely one of my favorite bits and i don't even know why
> 
> thank gods i'm done with the pronouns chaos though hahahaa. i have lots of varying headcanons about pidge and gender, but for the time being in this fic we're going to go with she/her pronouns for the rest of the story (augh, i'd finally gotten used to using "he." i'm really bad at timing). it was interesting to slide between "he" and "she", especially dealing with the border between pidge and katie. but i also felt like i was going cross-eyed sometimes. so that bit is worked through for now. 
> 
> happy halloween! i can't write any of the spooky halloweeny things i wanted to write because i don't even have time to do my dang homework or this actual current ongoing fic, much less an entirely new longfic and two continuation of old works!  
> gonna go be red riding hood at a nature center with some wolves tomorrow and pretend that none of my problems exist
> 
> update: chapter is now done! added like 2k of Garrison Trio Talking About Things, and a last lil bit with k&k. i'm still not 100% satisfied with this chapter so it might get some more work in the future when i'm not falling asleep. thanks for your patience, and i'll see you friday!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> forgot to post this yesterday sorry
> 
> *skips entire balmera arc* i’m just really out of it and didn’t have much to say about the balmera episodes. i don’t think they would have changed much. this whole fic is gonna get an overhaul in a few weeks, so i may add in some bits on it then. for now, just… assume it goes as in the show? 
> 
> also i mixed up how hunk and pidge’s kitchen battle went. just roll with it.

“I have a favor to ask of you.”

Hunk sat back, putting down his wrench and glancing up from the air circulator he was working on at Keith.  “O…kay?  What’s up?”

The Red Paladin bit his cheek, looking a little nervous.  “I need you to fix something.  I’m not a mechanic, I can’t do it.  But it’s important.”

Lance put down his datapad, saving his spot in the weird translated Altean novel Coran had given him.  “Quit beating around the bush, Mullet.  Why are you being so sketchy?  What do you want him to do?” 

Keith glared at him.  “I’m not being sketchy.  Fine.  Here.”  He pulled out a lumpy bag that had almost certainly been a pillowcase in its previous life, putting it on the table with a loud _clunk_.  Then he grabbed the bottom and upended it, letting fragments of metal, glass, and hard plastene scatter across the tabletop. 

Hunk knew what it was immediately.  Even with the lights dimmed and broken, this was somehow distinct from any other Galra drone.  Rover lay in shards in front of him, casing shattered, insides split and splintered. 

Lance’s jaw had dropped.  “Holy shit,” he murmured, staring at the pieces.  “How the – what – how did you even find it?” he suddenly switched gears, spinning to stare at Keith.  “Where was it?  What the _quiznak_ happened to it?”

“The turbine bay is a long way to fall,” Keith said quietly.  There was some kind of self-loathing in his eyes, like he blamed himself somehow for the little bot’s fate.  Like it was his fault, because he hadn’t been there. 

Hunk could relate. 

“Okay,” the Yellow Paladin said, taking a breath and reaching out to carefully touch over the shards.  “This is… this is pretty rough.  But I can do this.”

“I know you can,” Keith said, without the faintest trace of doubt in his voice.  “I don’t know how to do anything like this.  I want to help if I can, but I trust you to fix it.”

“Of course he can do it,” Lance scoffed.  “It’s _Hunk_.  He’s basically Superman when it comes to this stuff.”

Hunk huffed a little laugh.  “Thanks, guys.  I mean, it’s gonna take some serious work.  This is… a _lot_ of pieces.  It got pretty broken up.  But I’m gonna look through and see what’s still intact, what we’ll need to do heavy repairs on, and what’s going to need total replacement.  We can do it.”

Lance bounced to his feet.  “All right, team project!  Just you wait, Pidge – we’re going to have Rover up and running and better than ever before you can say ‘quiznak!’  And I’m gonna be more helpful than Keith!”

Keith sputtered.  “What?  It’s – this isn’t a _contest_ , Lance!  That’s–”

“I’ll give you both jobs,” Hunk said firmly, “and you’ll get them done and not get in the way of each other or distract me, or I’m gonna kick you out of the lab.”  Both boys nodded submissively.  Hunk’s face split into a slow smile.  “Now.  I’m going to take a look at what we have to work with.  Then we can get started!”

* * *

They had won the fight against Drazil.  The Balmera was recovering and its people were safe.  But Keith still felt wired, felt like he needed to fight.  His skin felt hot, like Red’s newfound heat ray had somehow made its way into his own body, threading through his muscles, sinking into his bones.  He wondered, if anyone looked at him, would they see him glowing like an ember?  He didn’t know. 

There was more than one source to the burning.  Sendak was still in the castle.  Sure, he was frozen and asleep and locked in a pod, but Keith didn’t trust any of that, not enough to relax.  Zarkon was evil and terrible and the root source of all their problems, but Sendak had been the one that had taken Shiro away.  Sendak had been the one who turned the castle’s barrier on and locked Keith out, who had nearly recaptured Shiro and almost killed Pidge. 

Keith didn’t trust anything other than death to keep Sendak away from them for long.  He hadn’t wanted to leave Shiro with him, but he couldn’t just sit in that room.  If he stayed any longer, he would have activated his Bayard and plunged the blade through Sendak’s heart just to feel the closure.  But Allura wanted him alive, and Keith couldn’t deny that she was right that the Galra commander might have useful information.  So he’d forced himself away, although it left a bad feeling in his stomach to leave Shiro there.  Maybe he should have coaxed his brother into coming with him – it couldn’t be good for Shiro to stay near the cause of so much of his suffering. 

Keith had always had a lot of energy.  Angry energy, anxious energy, lash-out-because-you-don’t-know-what-to-do energy.  It had gotten him into varying degrees of trouble (read: generally somewhere between a lot or _so freaking much_ ), but now he had a place for it. 

That place was the Altean castleship’s training deck.  Keith was slowly but steadily working his way up through the training bot’s levels – next time Allura watched him fight, it wouldn’t be set to a child’s practice.  It was honestly one of the best things Keith had ever experienced in his life.  He could hit hard, without restraint – he was fighting a robot, and there were plenty more in storage if he did manage to break it beyond repair.  The room changed according to manipulatable settings: he could set varying types and numbers of opponents, elevated levels of terrain, and hazards like the invisible maze or other designs he hadn’t figured out yet.  The bot itself was very strong and gave him more than enough of a challenge, and when it fought, it really fought.  Keith hadn’t yet figured out any kind of mechanical predictability that he might have been concerned about if practicing with a robot back on Earth.  Thanks again, super-advanced Altean tech.  Pidge would probably be able to find a pattern, but Pidge was somewhere in a lab poking at the Galra crystal and talking science, and Keith was very happy to be here and not there. 

“Initiate training level three,” Keith panted.  He was still learning how to use his Red Bayard’s sword form: before, he’d only ever had fists and his knife.  The Bayard had taken a bit of getting used to, but it had come incredibly naturally and he was only getting better every day.  There was always room for improvement, though. 

The training bot had a sword too.  He’d have to practice against enemies with blasters and cannons and pikes and all kinds of weapons eventually, but for now he’d start with a matching one.  That way he could watch how the bot fought with it and learn from that too. 

Altean technology was amazing. 

Well.  It had been amazing so far, and it was still amazing, right up to the moment when he said, “End training sequence,” and the bot didn’t stop.  In fact, it picked up speed, attacking with a force far stronger than it had been before. 

 _Shit._   Shit shit shit why did Keith have to train alone?  Why did Pidge have to be three floors down in a lab, instead of right here right now where she could fix whatever glitch was making the training deck want to kill him?  Why did stuff like this always happen???

The bot was now well above Keith’s ability level, and it seemed to have lost its “don’t kill the Human” protocol that was (hopefully) enabled on the lower levels.  His Bayard was knocked away, spinning off across the floor and detransforming. 

Keith hated running.  He hated losing a fight, and he hated fleeing from one.  But this stupid training robot was going to kill him here and now if he didn’t get the hell out, so get the hell out he did. 

Keith had not expected for the training deck to try to kill him.  He was even less expecting to find Lance in an airlock.  The wrong side of an airlock.  That was about to open into space. 

“Lance what the hell are you doing in there?” Keith shouted, but didn’t have time to wait for an answer as the bot descended upon him, sword raised. 

 _“I’m gonna get sucked out into space oh my god oh my god help Keith open the door oh my god”_ came the muffled answer through the superthick cosmoglass.  Not an answer, but also he was right.  Keith didn’t especially like Lance, mostly because he couldn’t figure out why the other boy was always going after him so much.  But they needed him to form Voltron, and also Keith didn’t dislike him enough to actually literally want him to die. 

The bot raised its sword for another attack.  The airlock opened.  Keith’s mind clicked. 

In a flash, he flung himself at the airlock control panel.  His fingers scraped over the open button, but it was enough force to trigger the mechanism, and the doors slid open, instantly sucking at the castle’s atmosphere with all the force of cosmic wind. 

It also dragged at Keith and the training bot.  Keith clung to the wall with survival desperation strengthening his grasp, but the bot had no such luck.  Its feet held little traction on the metal floor, and in moments it was sucked away and disappeared into the vast emptiness that lay beyond the airlock’s outer doors. 

A vast emptiness that Keith was seconds from being pulled into as well, and Lance too.  Lance hadn’t stopped screaming the whole time, but when Keith reached out, begging his exhausted arms to not give up the single tenuous grip on the wall as he strained towards Lance, the Blue Paladin reached back.  Their fingers locked, and Keith pulled with a strength he hadn’t been sure he still had, dragging them both back into the castle hall and slamming the close button before collapsing on the floor, panting with the exertion of running and fighting, as well as the breathlessness that came with being right next to an airlock open to space. 

Lance lay in a boneless flop beside him, gasping.  “What… what in stars… was _that_?” he panted.  He was shaking, his face pale, and he hadn’t even slightly released his death grip on Keith’s hand. 

Keith was having a hard time coming down from the adrenaline surge of fighting for his life and couldn’t find it in himself to mind.  “I don’t know,” he breathed, trying to still his mind and body.  “The training bot just… didn’t stop.  It tried to kill me.”

“The whole quiznaking _castle_ is trying to kill me!” Lance cried.  Between ragged breaths, Keith shot him a baffled stare.  “First the cryopod ate me, then the lights went off and I saw some guy made of light standing at the end of the hall staring at me, and then I heard Coran in the airlock but when I went inside to get him he wasn’t there and then it closed and I was inside and it was opening and–”

“Breathe, Lance,” Keith said gently.  And he had thought the training deck was just glitching.  This sounded a lot worse.  “It’s okay.  You’re out now, the bot is gone, the airlock is closed, we’re okay.”

Lance closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall and forcing himself to take a deep, slow breath.  He was just starting to open his eyes, calm beginning to return, when something nearby went _click_ and then they were both off like rockets, shrieking like children and running frantically for anywhere that wasn’t here. 

* * *

There was something about that crystal. 

Pidge was still learning how to use this entire new universe of Altean tech, not to mention figuring out how to hack her way through any Galra stuff she could get her hands on, get around what she could to prepare for missions, and reverse-engineer and upgrade anything she could take to use for Voltron.  She would never forgive what Sendak had done, but now that they had fixed the castle and Lance and Shiro were alright, Pidge could focus on prying every last secret out of this Galra crystal.  She would figure out how to keep this from ever happening again, take whatever she could to improve the castle or Lions or Team Voltron’s tech, and scrape out every thread of information this thing had hidden in it.  The whole experience had been horrible, but she was going to gut it for everything it had and that would hopefully help the anxiety and guilt that twisted in her stomach every time she thought about the invasion. 

(She steadfastly didn’t think about how helpful Rover would be right now.  Its scanning arrays, its comprehension of Galra technology, its simple presence keeping her company as she worked.  The hangar was too big and empty, even with Green crouching nearby and humming in the back of Pidge’s mind.)

(Pidge missed her drone.)

 _“Pidge!”_ Hunk came charging into the hangar with a crash.  Well.  Pidge wasn’t alone anymore.  “Pidge, oh my god, I think the castle’s gone crazy!”

“What?” she looked up from the computer where she was setting up a new set of scans for the Galra crystal.  “The castle is – what are you talking about?”

Hunk leaned over, bracing his hands on his thighs as he panted.  “I mean,” he finally said, straightening up but still trying to catch his breath, “that the food goo machine basically exploded and attacked me, and I am going to be traumatized for life.”

Pidge’s mouth twisted.  Poor Hunk.  “It’s probably leftover stuff from this thing,” she said, gesturing at the crystal, which pulsed with faint sickeningly purple light.  “The whole castle is still probably a little weird, we haven’t gotten the chance to debug it all.”

Hunk sighed.  “Yeah,” he said, “that’s what I was afraid of.  I was just really hoping it wouldn’t get into the kitchens.  Do the Galra have no honor?  No trace of dignity?”

“Not a scrap,” Pidge said in a hard voice, and he nodded. 

“Anyway, I need help taking down the food goo machine before it drowns the entire room,” Hunk continued with a shudder.  “That would be impossible to clean and we would never get real food again, and I am absolutely _not_ down with that.  If we have to spend the rest of our lives fighting an impossible fight against a gigantic ancient evil empire, we’re going to eat well.  That’s where I draw the line.”

“Of course it is,” Pidge snorted.  Their senses of normality were clearly long gone.  She couldn’t help but agree with him, though.  The food goo was bearable but definitely not desirable, and Pidge had grown to love Hunk’s cooking even back in the Garrison, when he would make them all secret snacks prepared in kitchens he wasn’t supposed to have access to. 

If the kitchens were where they started the analysis and debugging, Pidge was pretty sure nobody was going to mind. 

Ooo…kay then.  Hunk often had a tendency to exaggerate.  But he absolutely had not been lying about the state of the kitchen, or of the food goo machine.  He and Pidge beat it, of course – it was just a machine, and they were both _very_ good at machines, but then there was some kind of small explosion inside it, and the whole thing began to leak green goop.  The rest of the room was covered too, smushed on the walls and globbing on the floor and dripping slowly down from the ceiling. 

Their eyes met.  “Leave it for Coran?” Hunk suggested. 

“Leave it for Coran,” Pidge agreed.  Coran would know better how to clean this up.  They definitely weren’t just avoiding such a long and gross and sticky task.  Absolutely not.  Paladins of Voltron would never do such a thing. 

They left quickly. 

In exchange for her help with the machine, Hunk offered to help Pidge with whatever she was up to on the crystal project.  She directed him to the start switch near her computer from where she sat on a stepladder beside the crystal, and was about to climb back down when suddenly “down” ceased to exist. 

“Uh, Hunk?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you accidentally hit the zero-gravity switch instead?”

“No, of course not.  There is no zero-gravity switch. … Is there?”

Pidge groaned.  Great.  Just great. 

Hunk tried to swim towards her, forgetting momentarily that although they were floating, air was not water and there was nothing to push against.  Pidge tried to reach for something, anything, and cursed her short arms.  They were both just stuck, drifting aimlessly through the hangar. 

Finally, _finally_ , they reached one another.  Pidge stretched her little arms as far as they could go, and Hunk did the same with his considerably longer reach.  Their fingers floated, brushed, and –

Locked. 

Something relaxed in Pidge’s chest as Hunk pulled her towards himself.  “Okay,” she said almost to herself.  “Now we need to do something about the gravity.”

A memory.  Matt talking, laughing at the idea of playing dodgeball in space.  Objects bouncing off of one another, both rebounding in a way that doesn’t work in regular gravity.  Complaining that Shiro would probably be better than him, because _‘Perfect Takashi is perfect on Earth and in flight, so he’ll probably be floating around like a zero-G angel while I do my worst space jellyfish impression.’_  

Something.  Newton’s Law.  Forces.  Motion without gravity.  “Hunk,” Pidge said suddenly, “I need you to kick me as hard as you can.”

Hunk’s eyes widened.  “What?  No!  We’re friends!”

Pidge huffed, although warmth bloomed in her chest at the words.  “No, dummy – kick me so I can float to the control panel on the wall and turn the gravity back on.”

“Oh.” Hunk frowned, considering.  “But then you’ll be really far away.”

“And if I get it right and get the gravity on, it won’t matter because then we can walk like normal people.”

He thought about it for a minute, engineer’s brain spinning to analyze the situation, consider how successful her attempt might be, what other options they had.  Not good.  Possible.  Not many. 

“Okay.”

The kick did kind of hurt – Hunk was strong, even with the lack of gravity taking much of the force out of the blow.  Pidge flew towards the wall, moving both slower and faster than she had expected.  Hunk flew in the opposite direction, squawking as he spun in circles. 

The control panel gleamed, mocking her with its nearness.  _There it is.  I can fix this._

 _Come on, come on, come –_ she’d miscalculated.  Hunk’s kick had been too high, she was off-course, no way to redirect, she wasn’t going to –

Pidge hit the wall beside the panel.  The laws of physics overruled her desperate reach, and she bounced right back into the open space of the hangar. 

“No!”

Pidge hated feeling helpless.  Now, floating in her own hangar, tech drifting useless around her and Hunk too far away to reach, looking scared and smaller than he had any reason to be, frustration and anxiety twisted heavy in her stomach. 

 _Think, Katie.  How are you going to fix this?_  Because she could fix this.  She would fix this. 

Keith fixed it for her.  The hangar door opened, and gravity switched back on automatically, dropping Pidge and Hunk and all the loose tech and equipment in the entire hangar back to the ground with a crash (most of the crash definitely came from the Green Lion thudding back to ground, but the rest of everything certainly added to the racket). 

 _Ow._   Pidge heard Hunk groaning behind her as she sat up slowly, rubbing her shoulder and taking stock.  Nothing seriously damaged in her body, although that phylaxer beside Green’s paw definitely had a few more cracks than before.  Pidge herself just had a few bruises, that was it.  Hunk looked to be the same. 

“How can you guys be taking a nap when the castle is trying to kill us?!” Lance cried as he charged into the Hangar, hot on Keith’s heels.  Coran trailed behind, looking both puzzled and slightly concerned. 

“Taking a nap?!” Hunk’s voice cracked.  The two Legs descended into a frenetic argument over who had had the worst castle-trying-to-get-them experience.  Lance said something about airlocks, and Pidge’s eyebrow raised – only to be joined moments later when Keith interjected, “Well, I had a robot try to kill me!”

Okay.  So this was a bad day for everyone. 

Coran speculated that it was latent effects of the Galra crystal.  Although he, Hunk, and Pidge had disconnected it as soon as the mechanic and Yellow Paladin had returned from the Balmera, it had still had more than enough time to integrate with the castle systems, and clearly corrupt them as well. 

Keith was the one to notice one of their missing pieces.  “Has anyone seen Shiro?”

* * *

They found Shiro where they had left him.  He stood beside where Sendak’s cryopod had been.  The chamber was empty, and Shiro was leaning heavily against the wall, panting hard, his right arm lit up a violent purple. 

“Shiro, are you okay?” Pidge came close but forcibly stopped herself before she could reach out and touch.  Shiro turned unfocused eyes on the Green Paladin, slowly coming back to himself. 

Keith was searching for the enemy.  “Where’s Sendak?”  The cryopod was empty.  No… more than empty.  The entire pod itself was gone.  Like… like it had been ejected. 

Sendak was gone.  Shiro was talking, his voice rough and fragmented.  “I had to get him out of here,” he mumbled, staring into space.  “He can’t be trusted on this ship.”

Lance shouted something about how the problem _was_ the ship, describing all their misadventures far too quickly for Shiro to fully comprehend.  But Keith was busy processing. 

Sendak was gone.  That should be good.  Keith should be happy that the threat was gone, that Sendak was no longer in the castle.  He couldn’t help but think, though… this didn’t meant that he was dead.  The chances that the pod would be rescued were almost zero, the chances that it would land on a habitable planet without killing its occupant even less.  But almost zero was not zero.  If anyone was going to make it back from this, to come back and get them in the future, Keith would bet his Bayard that it would be Sendak.  A glance at Pidge’s face told him she was thinking the same thing. 

 _I should have stabbed him when I had the chance._  

But they didn’t get any time to think in depth about where Sendak had gone, or what his fate might be.  Because the castle was being haunted and controlled by the corrupted ghost of the dead King Alfor of Altea, and Allura was flying it straight into a dying star. 

Allura woke up.  Expression splintered with grief, she left for the AI chamber, to disconnect her father and kill him permanently.  Forever. 

Pidge wondered if, if she had been in the same place, she could have done the same.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. 

Keith thought about Shiro, thought about how long he’d been alone.  How sometimes all that had kept him going were the memories of his brother.  He thought about the purple Galra arm, about corruption and hijacking and control.  He watched Allura trying to keep herself together through a new flood of grief, none of which she’d ever really dealt with, and hoped he never had to be in her position. 

* * *

The lab was quiet.  It hadn’t been, earlier – Lance had been talking to himself as he carefully soldered tiny panels of glass and electriwire together, and Keith had been using a small laser cutter, sparks spitting from the tip as he traced out to the millimeter each shape Hunk had drawn into the plastene sheets.  Hunk himself had been mostly silent, only humming occasionally as he lay out electropanels, carefully linking boards with the intense microfocus he always got when he had a project. 

And this was an important project, requiring absolute perfection in order to succeed. 

Rover had been almost totally destroyed by its fall in the turbine bay.  Drones were built of sturdy stuff, but it had been a long way down and Haxus was not light.  The casing had had to be almost completely rebuilt, and there had been no small amount of damage to the internal portions and computerworks. 

Hunk had had to enlist Coran for some of that.  He couldn’t read either Galra or Altean, and he really was more of a hardware guy without the level of software understanding needed for this.  Normally he would go straight to Pidge, but that wasn’t an option. 

Right now, Pidge was in the Green Lion’s bay, working on the Galra crystal with an almost frenetic energy.  She had said that she would feel better once she’d gotten everything out of it that she could, had taken apart every last byte contained within the thing.  It represented Sendak’s invasion, what they had almost lost, and the latent infections left behind in the castle systems that had nearly killed them all again.  To Pidge, if she could deconstruct the crystal and gut every scrap of data in it, that would be some form of victory.  She needed to do it. 

So Pidge was working alone.  In a lab on the other side of the castle from the Green Lion’s hangar, three-fifths of Team Voltron were working quietly on the robot that had been one of her closest companions, that had sacrificed itself to save her.  Hunk couldn’t ask her to help.  She might not even want to talk about it.  And if she agreed and it failed, the loss would double. 

No.  They would fix Rover together, with Coran’s help, and when it was all better they would give it back to her, whole and functional and making that little teapot-trill that was apparently drone-speak for excitement, like a dog wagging its tail. 

They were nearly finished.  After a bit of trial and error and some spark-singed fingertips, Hunk had finally gotten the internal computing components to go together and the whole thing seemed functional.  It was essentially the same programs as before, although Hunk had created better integrity with the castle’s systems as well as the Paladin armors.  He’d also added a lighter degree of the BLIP-tech the team had used on the Balmera.  It wasn’t terribly powerful, but Rover 2.0 would have a better detection system of living beings within a reasonable radius.  Hopefully it would come in handy on missions. 

In addition, the little bot had a totally new casing.  Hunk had spent a long time staring at the shards of its old shell, but there were just too many pieces, and Keith probably hadn’t been able to get every single one, and no matter how he figured it the end result would be something patchworked and Frankenstein-esque, not at all the new and revived image he was trying to go for. 

Even though it was Rover, Lance had shuddered upon looking at Hunk’s rebuilding attempts.  Rover was on their side.  But behavior and light colors aside, it looked an awful lot like the ones they fought regularly on missions – and like the one that had detonated inside the castle, shattering the crystal and almost killing Lance. 

Then and there, Hunk had made a decision.  Rover was part of their team.  He would make another casing identical to the original, like a disguise for missions when the drone needed to blend in with standard Galra tech, but its standard form was going to be different. 

Keith had good hands, steady and confident.  He had cut perfectly to Hunk’s templates, and the assembly was easy with no catches or misalignments.  Lance’s soldering was even and smooth, piecing together the fragments of glass and wire that filled in the gaps in the shell, tiny windows that allowed the bot to perform its scans and protected its lights.  Hunk could see the form in its every detail in his mind, and as Keith and Lance watched, Pidge’s robot returned beneath his hands. 

Rover’s new shell was eggshell-white instead of the flat Galra gray, thickened portions of forest-green reinforcing the corners.  The lightning-bolt shaped runner lights were the same shade as Pidge’s armor, as her Bayard, as her Lion.  Its leading light would be bright green-white, once it was powered on. 

He didn’t turn it on.  Rover sat on the table, resurrected, but quiet and dim. 

“Hunk?” Lance asked tentatively, breaking the delicate silence. 

The Yellow Paladin shook his head.  “Not me.” At the others’ puzzled looks, he elaborated.  “It’s not for me to do that part.  We’ll give it to Pidge.  She can wake it up.”

He didn’t say the rest.  She can wake it up, if she wants.  If she chooses to.  If not, it was just metal and plastene and wire, and it could be discarded or taken apart and reused.  If Pidge wanted Rover back, it would be right here, repaired and modified but still her friend.  If she didn’t – if it was too painful, if she’d changed her mind – it could be removed easily and forgotten about. 

Keith remembered how attached Pidge had been to her new friend, right from the moment she’d altered its programming and brought it to their side.  He thought about how she had looked when she’d told them all of its sacrifice during the invasion.  About how intensely she’d latched on to Beezer, and how much the cyberunit’s betrayal had hurt. 

He didn’t think she would reject this gift at all. 

He understood, after all.  It was preciously rare that you had something you loved return to you. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _*headphones by walk the moon plays through rover's speakers*_
> 
> I HAVE TOO MANY ROVER FEELINGS


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a day late yet again, sorry. yesterday took a lot more out of me than i thought. anyway, herein we have the return of rover, some discoveries about quintessence, and bad decisions made by keith. what fun. 
> 
> i legit spent the rest of s1 completely convinced that they would get rover back. i was proved wrong, and i would like to formally file my displeasure. 
> 
> next chapter is the last for season 1! this thing is already over 70 pages long, i'm kind of terrified at the concept of seven more seasons of this.

It was the moment of truth.  Hunk was finally satisfied with Rover’s build-out and had deemed it complete.  Both he and Lance had agreed that Keith should be the one to present it to her. 

“It was your idea,” Hunk said when Keith initially balked.  “You thought of fixing it, and you went and got it.  When you knew you couldn’t fix it on your own you came to us, but still – you started this.  You should give it back to her.”

“Also you’ve known her the longest, weird as that is,” Lance added.  “You’re the Arms.  You’ve got a relationship, more than we have with her even though we’re working on that.  From what I know of Pidge, she’ll take it best from you.”

After no small amount of convincing, Keith finally accepted.  Now he was holding a box that until recently contained old damaged datapads but had now been repurposed into the Rover Carrying Box.  It was both heavier and lighter than he’d expected.  He couldn’t remember Rover ever lying on any surface, before – it was always floating or zooming or hovering in the air, usually beside or at least near Pidge.  Now it was whole again, but the power was off.  It hadn’t been turned on since Hunk had finished fixing it. 

The box was definitely a lot heavier than the drone contained within it. 

Pidge was with the others on the bridge.  Keith didn’t mean for this to be some kind of big ceremony, but now that Rover was done he wanted almost desperately to give it to her, regardless of who else was in the room. 

Allura and Coran were talking quietly to the side, standing near one of the great front windows.  Shiro was in his chair, reading through something on a datapad with a half-attentive air.  Pidge sat cross-legged at her station, typing away at something that was half numbers and half Altean letters and completely incomprehensible to anyone else with the possible exception of Hunk. 

Keith took a deep breath.  Hunk gave an encouraging smile, and Lance shot some exaggerated thumbs-ups in Keith’s direction.  It was now or never, and Keith was determined. 

“Hey, Pidge.”

The Green Paladin blinked, snapping out of whatever tech-centric brainflow she’d been in and looking up at Keith with a surprising lack of irritation, considering he had just interrupted her work.  “Yeah?  What’s up?” She stretched her shoulders with a groan.  “Is something broken again?  I told Lance I would fix the temperature unit later, I’m working on more important projects right now.  But if it’s something else, like the air filters or the water system or–”

Keith cut her off before she could go down the rabbit hole of all the things that were wrong with the castle (and there were a lot.  It was over ten thousand years old, after all).  “I – we – uh–”

In retrospect, he should have planned this part out better. 

“What?” Pidge asked, and uh oh, now there was irritation in her tone.  She’d been working, and he was bothering her, seemingly for no reason. 

 _Fuck it.  Here goes nothing._   “Here,” Keith said roughly, and thrust the box at her.  She took it more out of instinct than anything else, blinking puzzledly at him.  Then her attention shifted down to the box. 

“You know my birthday’s not for months still, right, Keith?” she asked dryly.  “At least I think so.  And when in the world would you have found the time to–” Pidge’s words suddenly cut off as she opened the box and saw what was inside. 

For what felt like minutes on end, she was silent.  Enough time passed that Keith began to wonder if this had all been a bad idea – if she had moved on, or if she was over it, or if she just didn’t want to think about it anymore.  Maybe he’d made a mistake.  Keith opened his mouth to… to apologize, or to offer to take the box back and never speak of it again, or to do something he wasn’t sure of yet (he _really_ should have planned this out more), when Pidge finally moved. 

She didn’t say anything at all.  Keith watched in silence as she reached in, hands trembling just the slightest bit.  They closed around the drone’s casing like it was familiar, like she knew its form as well as she knew her own skin.  Very slowly, she lifted it up, stopping when it was just in front of her face.  The little window in the front stared back like an eye, darkened in sleep.  The casing was different, but it was unmistakable. 

The others had noticed that something was up by now.  Coran and Allura had turned from their conversation and fell silent at the sight.  Shiro had put his datapad down and was watching them with something soft in his eyes. 

“You have to – you have to turn it on,” Keith said awkwardly into the quiet. 

The words triggered something at last.  Pidge took in a hard, heavy breath, pulling herself out of wherever she’d gone in her mind.  Very carefully, she shifted her grasp so that she was holding the drone in one hand.  The other searched carefully for the panel in the back.  This, too, was familiar, and her fingertips found the power touch easily.  All eyes on them, she pressed it. 

There was a tiny click.  Then a low hum.  The hum increased in pitch for a couple of seconds, and then there was a flicker, deep within the glass windows of the drone’s new green and white shell. 

A small buzz, another flicker – and then Rover blinked on, its runner lights igniting new-leaf green, its leading light shining a brilliant white-green.  It scanned the room, processing space and walls, electrical signals, radio waves, the faint rolling radiation that emanated from every aspect of space.  New BLIP tech arrays picked up each lifesign within the room, matching details to individuals’ files within its storage.  Each was familiar, but one was more so. 

With a bright flash and a loud string of beeps and whistles, Rover shot up from Pidge’s hands to hover square in front of her for a handful of seconds, seeming to scan her over and over.  Then it trilled up and down and zipped in a little circle, leading sensors always pointed directly at Pidge.  It spun around and around and around, and the whole display was just so _happy_ that it couldn’t help but break the somber stillness that had held the room from the moment Pidge had opened the box. 

Lance let out a laugh, and at the sound Rover zoomed over to him, beeping brightly as if to say hello.  In an instant, it switched over and zipped to Hunk, hovering beside him and letting out a series of booping tones that left the Yellow Paladin shaking his head, a huge smile on his face.  Then it took off again, flashing over to circle Allura and Coran as they stared in bafflement.  The mice squeaked in greeting and Rover squeaked back.  Then it was off again, sweeping up to Shiro and making a sound that was so close to a small bird’s chirp that Shiro – strong, serious leader Shiro – laughed out loud, his face open with surprise and happiness.  A quick zip and it reached Keith, hovering beside him as if it was scanning him and giving a few tiny _meeps_ that he’d never heard before. 

Then it was back to Pidge.  Rover let out a few quiet whistles, and when Pidge pressed her hands to its sides, the lights dimmed as if it was closing its eyes. 

Everyone quietly went back to what they’d been doing, and nobody mentioned the fact that Pidge’s face was wet. 

Unsure of what to do with himself, Keith ended up sitting beside Shiro, leaning against the side of the Black Paladin’s chair and toying with his old knife.  He felt a little uncertain still, but a glance at the Green seat where Pidge and Rover were still reacquainting themselves with each other was enough to settle him, and he relaxed slowly into his spot. 

“You did good.” Shiro’s voice startled Keith, and he jumped a little, only just avoiding cutting his hand on the tip of the dagger.  He tipped his head backwards, looking up until he could meet his brother’s eyes, upside down above him. 

Shiro was smiling.  “Pidge is really happy, Keith.  You’ve done something wonderful.  Finding Rover and fixing him must have been very difficult.”

“I didn’t do it alone,” Keith said quietly.  Shiro followed his gaze.  Hunk and Lance were talking, playing some kind of card game with holo-cards generated by the castle.  “I could never have fixed it by myself.”

“But you aren’t alone,” Shiro reminded.  “You have a team, and you knew who could do what you could not.  You brought Rover back, Keith.  I can’t remember the last time I saw Katie this happy.  It was long before Kerberos at least, I’m sure.”

Keith watched them, Green Paladin and ex-Galra drone.  Sure, he had met Pidge years before the Kerberos mission.  But they hadn’t really interacted, and the relationship certainly hadn’t formed until they met again deep in the Garrison, the only two who wouldn’t accept the lies.  The Katie he really knew had long been filled with rage and fear, anxiety and a desperate longing.  He knew.  He had felt the same way. 

This didn’t solve anything in the long run.  Overall, this was just a drone, reprogrammed on a whim and brought back to their side with a vague idea of usefulness.  They would have all been fine if Rover had stayed in pieces, with no current running through its circuitboards.  Pidge would have been fine (eventually).  She would have focused on Voltron, focused on finding her family.  The bot would have faded into memory, maybe even been forgotten. 

In the long run, this was meaningless.  Keith hadn’t brought Katie’s brother back to her, hadn’t found her father in the depths of space.  All he’d done was go into a turbine bay and collect some fragments of plastene and metal into a bag. 

But.  But, he had brought her something back.  It wasn’t her brother, it wasn’t her father, wasn’t the home or safety they all longed for.  It was just a little drone. 

Keith watched Rover’s bright lights, listened to its excited whistling as it hummed and buzzed around Pidge like a puppy reunited with its human.  Even if it was just a drone, maybe he had done something pretty good anyway. 

* * *

Allura and Coran could debate the ethics of hijacking memories as much as they wanted.  Pidge knew what she was going to do.  She had never had much time for fussy issues of ethics and privacy and confidential information.  Especially not for monsters like Sendak.  She was going to take everything she could and then some, and give a good kick to what was left, thank you very much. 

Unfortunately, because of the unwilling nature of the memory extraction and the sudden and unplanned ejection of the pod (and _god_ Pidge hoped he was dead, choke on the vacuum of space you purple fucker, it’s better than what you deserve), the data was pretty severely fragmented.  There wasn’t much there, overall. 

Pidge didn’t care.  It was more than nothing, and she was going to take all these scraps and weave them together like a vengeful little spider.  She would take Zarkon down with a lacework of half-corrupted data and fragments of programs.  Just watch her. 

“We don’t even have a map,” Keith said from where they all stood behind Pidge’s chair, watching her poke and prod at what they had of Sendak’s memories.  She’d be annoyed if she wasn’t so focused. 

“Who needs a map?” Lance asked, flipping one hand.  “I could probably fire my Bayard anywhere and hit a Galra ship.  It’s not like we have to _look_.” 

Well.  He wasn’t wrong. 

“We need to start small,” Shiro said firmly.  “More rural targets, transport and shipping and the like.  We can free planets one at a time, and grow from there.”

Lance and Keith chorused their dismay at the plan.  Then they glared at each other, annoyed that the other had the audacity to have the same complaint.  

“Shiro’s right,” Hunk said, coaxing the two Right-Side Paladins into backing down.  “We can’t win if we’re dead.”

“We aren’t strong enough or experienced enough to hit big or dangerous targets,” Shiro explained.  “Only three of us have real pilot training, and I’m the only one who actually graduated from the Garrison.  We have a lot to learn in a lot of areas.”

“It’s not like the Empire is going anywhere,” Pidge grumbled.  She entered a new key, and finally things started threading together.  “Gotcha.”

The others refocused, and she gave them the short version.  She only had fragments of Sendak’s memories.  But she also had the pieces of data salvaged from his ship, when she and Shiro had gone to it back on Arus.  Neither set was complete, but she could cross-reference them and get a slightly clearer picture. 

“Nothing is complete and it’s still mostly just a garbled mess, but some things kept repeating.” She pointed to a copy of the phrase on her screen, although most of the team couldn’t read it.  “‘Universal station.’  Or maybe ‘galactic hub.’  My translation program isn’t great yet.  But it’s there, and it repeats a lot.  It probably means something important.”

Last time ‘something’ had kept repeating in her data, it had been the word _Voltron_.  She was willing to trust that this was about equally significant. 

Coran entered the coordinates she’d scraped together, and the screen loaded the location.  It was empty. 

“Maybe Sendak remembered it wrong?” Keith said, although he sounded doubtful. 

“No.”  Pidge knew all about secrets.  Maybe nothing was showing up in the maps, but something mentioned so often, so important that it was preserved even in the fragments of information that they had, could not be meaningless.  Rover chirred in agreement, hovering just above her shoulder.  “There’s something there.  And it’s important.” She grinned.  “Maybe it’s a top-secret base.” 

What an adventure that would be. 

* * *

When secrets, conspiracies, or mysteries were involved, always trust Pidge.  Keith had known this for a long time, but the presence of a large shipping station where the maps and scanners had said was nothing but empty space only proved it even more. 

“Well, I’ll be snargled,” Coran said in an impressed tone.  “Not a single array picked it up.  It appears the gravitation between the two planets warps the electron emission spectrum enough to keep the planet off the deep space scanners.”  Whatever that meant. 

“So you can only see it if you really know where to look,” Pidge mused.  The best place to hide a huge shipping base: empty space.  There sure as hell wasn’t a lack of it, and the planets’ overlap ensured that it was hidden even if someone did happen to scan the location.  The universe was way too big for someone to physically look in every hiding spot, and there was nothing to suggest that this particular location had anything worth examining.  It was almost certain that nobody would ever come looking here if they weren’t supposed to. 

But Team Voltron wasn’t just anybody, and Pidge’s hunch had turned out right.  They’d found the needle of a port in the biggest haystack in the universe, open space. 

The base was just well-hidden, but the Green Lion could actually turn invisible now, thanks to something involving the technology of the training maze – Keith couldn’t follow how Pidge had explained it.  As they flew in under the thirty-second cloak, Pidge grumbled about making it longer, more powerful, evading more types of sensors and scanners.  Keith personally thought that the cloak’s existence at all was pretty impressive (he hadn’t even really realized that the Lions could be modified, but if anyone could do it, it would be Pidge), but he didn’t say anything.  Pidge could be prickly about that kind of thing, always wanting to improve and never quite satisfied with her work, quick to lash out when she thought she was being overcomplimented. 

For the time being, the Green Lion was the only one with the cloaking implemented and active.  So Pidge was flying, carrying Keith, Shiro, Lance, and Hunk.  

And also Allura.  She hadn’t been exactly wrong in her arguments – none of the Humans had any experience with this kind of base (obviously) – but nobody had really expected her to go.  At the very least, they had expected bossy, protective Shiro to shut it down.  But he had just shrugged (much to Coran’s displeasure), and now Allura stood beside Hunk, hair bound up and armored suit on, ready to go in with them. 

The central control room had a single bored Galra soldier and two sentrybots.  Shiro punched the soldier clear across the room, and Rover sent out a powerful electrowave that stunned the sentries and allowed Lance’s Bayard and Pidge’s grappling-katar to take them out without issue. 

Pidge wasted no time.  Between Shiro’s arm and Rover’s formerly-Galra tech, she cracked the computer bank open in no time, and the transfer seemed to go much better this time. 

Apparently they had been working on it.  “Remember when we studied algorithms at the Garrison, and Mr. York told us that joke about the ghost learning symbolic logic and innumerably infinite sets?” Hunk began. 

 _No,_ Keith though, watching out the control room’s windows.  _I wasn’t in many of those classes, and I didn’t really pay attention to the ones I did have.  And I never had classes with any of you_.  He wondered if it would have been different, if he’d been friends with Hunk and Lance.  And Pidge.  If she had been able to go to the Garrison as herself, and not undercover.  If they had grown to know each other in a more normal setting, not fighting a powerful institution and looking for their families. 

“Boooring,” Lance groaned.  He had clearly heard the joke often and was absolutely not interested.  Keith kind of wanted to hear the rest, but before he could tell Lance to shove it and ask Hunk more about ghost logic, something caught his eye.  A very big something.  “Uh, guys?” He pointed, rather unnecessarily, at the gigantic ship approaching to land.  “We’ve got company.”

The portship docked, after a very strange game of charades involving Hunk and a fried sentrybot.  Somehow it worked. 

“Download’s done,” Pidge said.  Hunk helped Shiro unplug his arm while she tapped at her computer. 

“What does it say?” Lance asked.  He and Keith were keeping an eye on the ship outside. 

More typing.  Pidge growled.  “Nothing.  There’s nothing here.  No useful or important information at all, just a stupid schedule of ships.”  The force of the typing increased, as if she could punch something helpful out of the data. 

Keith wasn’t exactly sure how it happened, but within the next few minutes the plan went from “go back to the castle because there’s nothing for us here” to “Shiro and Allura go sneak into the ship to get whatever information might be on it.” 

“How are you going to get in?” Keith asked skeptically.  They couldn’t just stealth their way onto the ship.  Maybe Pidge could, or possibly Keith, but neither Shiro nor Allura was particularly specialized in stealth. 

Allura smiled, something dangerous woven into it.  “I’m going to walk right through the front door.”  And then she began to grow. 

As she became taller, Allura’s skin moltened from nutmeg to violet.  Her shoulders broadened, her arms growing longer and her legs becoming thicker.  In moments, she had totally transformed. 

The Humans gaped.  Pidge’s eyes were enormous behind her glasses.  “Why are aliens so fucking tall,” she said faintly, neck craned from where she was still sitting on the floor at her computer.  Lance tried to say something, but all that came out was a faint croak.  Shiro looked like someone had hit him over the head with a frying pan.  Keith just stared. 

Hunk finally spoke for them all.  _“How the heck did you do that?”_

It turned out Alteans were a shape-changing race.  The inevitable babble of questions that followed this revelation was cut short by Shiro’s insistence that Allura not go alone, which was then interrupted by Allura’s sharp rebuttal that he not tell her what to do.  Keith thought it was pretty odd that the Head of Voltron was apparently below the princess of a long-dead planet in the chain of command, but hey.  No one was asking him. 

“You’re going to need him,” Pidge interrupted the leaders’ argument.  She held up Shiro’s Galra arm like a puppet hand, waving it back and forth.  “Rover is staying with me, and Shiro’s arm is the only other thing that can interface with the Galra systems and let me get information.  I can monitor the download remotely from here, but he’ll need to go with you.”  Allura frowned but acquiesced to his accompanying her on the trip. 

Keith tried to suppress the worry.  They were all on an enemy base – it wasn’t any more or less dangerous on the ship than on the shipping base.  He still didn’t like the idea, though. 

There was another issue to the pair’s mission.  “How are you going to get Shiro onboard?” His brother had many, many talents, but even Perfect Shiro couldn’t shapeshift. 

Allura smiled.  “I have an idea.”

Admittedly, Shiro looked a little less interested in going to the ship once he had to scrunch himself into a hoverbox that had hastily been emptied of most of its materials but was still not very big.  It was pretty funny to watch, despite the actual purpose and risks.  Keith would have to remember to bring this up later with the worst timing he could manage. 

Allura and Shiro’s plan worked, against all the odds, and the others watched them enter the ship and vanish from view.  They also watched what was being unloaded – sets of large cylinders being moved by sentrybots, glowing bright yellow even from here.  They caught Keith’s eye instantly. 

“I suspect it’s sporks,” said Hunk.  As the argument over sporks got underway, it became apparent that Hunk had a thing about sporks.  Yet another detail that Keith didn’t know, although now he was really curious as to why on earth that was such a thing for him. 

“Maybe this guy will tell us what’s in them,” Pidge interrupted the spork-related bickering.  She stared at the sentry sprawled out in front of her, wires and cables plugged in every which way.  “What is coming in and out of the station?”

The sentry made a little crackly noise.  “Interrogation detected.  Initiating lockdown.”  A few sparks flew out from where the collarbone would be on a Human. 

Pidge’s eyes narrowed.  “Not talking, eh?”

Keith almost felt sorry for the bot.  Anti-interrogation sequence or not, it didn’t stand a chance against Pidge and Rover.  It would only be a matter of minutes. 

Movement near the maybe-but-probably-not-spork containers caught his attention again.  A tall figure in heavy black robes obscuring every detail and a massive white mask over its face had met the sentries.  It gestured hazily, and when it turned and moved off the sentries followed. 

“I’m going to follow them,” Keith said.  He ignored Lance’s warnings to wait.  Shiro wasn’t here, and as the Right Arm Keith was pretty sure he was the second-in-command.  Whatever was in those containers was important, he knew it.  Shiro was getting information from the ship itself, and Pidge was trawling through whatever the base itself had and anything the sentrybot might have to contribute.  Hopefully, he would get where they were from, and she would find what they were for.  Keith, for his part, was going to figure out where the containers were going.  Between the three pieces, maybe they would figure out why this seemingly insignificant shipping base was so secretive and hidden. 

Lance sure tried, but nothing was stopping Keith now.  Distantly, he heard Pidge’s dry voice, “You are a paragon of leadership, Lance.”  He suppressed a smile.  Then he shook his head and moved faster. 

He barely made it into the room behind the robed figure and the sentries with their cargo.  Keith pressed himself against a wall, trying to remain small and quiet while still keeping up with the group.  They reached the central room, and Keith could never have expected the sight that befell him. 

The room was huge, some kind of storage space maybe.  And it was filled, in rings around the walls and up to the arcing ceiling, with the yellow glow containers. 

* * *

Pidge was going to lose her mind.  Between Hunk playing “why are you hitting yourself” with the sentry to distract himself from freaking out and Lance asking if Allura talked about him when he wasn’t in the room, Pidge was about ready to scream. 

She settled for making the sentry hit them both in the head and telling them to shut up so she could work.  Rover was her only source of sanity. 

Okay.  Time to focus.  Shiro had connected his arm to the ship’s computers, and she streamed the data as quickly as she could back into her own laptop.  It was going fine until –

Static on the comms.  Someone talking, an unfamiliar voice.  Male.  Deep.  Slightly blurred through the translation software – a Galra.  Allura gave him some bluff about being high-ranking officers of Zarkon, and somehow… it worked.  The soldier apologized, and his footsteps faded out of the radio as Allura and Shiro breathed sighs of relief, matched by those of Pidge, Hunk, and Lance. 

Maybe their luck would hold. 

Keith’s voice was crackly in her ear, but his words were clear enough.  The visual from his helmet went to the castle, but a few quick taps brought it up on Pidge’s screen too.  Lance and Hunk clustered around her, and they all stared at the image. 

It was a little shaky, shifting back and forth as Keith looked from one thing to the other.  The room was enormous, and it was lined on every wall from floor to ceiling with the huge yellow tubes.  There was one in the middle, and near it was the shadowy figure that Keith had left to follow, arms raised.  Then there was bright purple lightning, causing the helmet camera to fade and blur.  But as the electronics adjusted, Pidge could make out thick purple liquid collecting beneath the swirly yellow spiraled orb, dripping slowly into a tiny container below. 

 _“I’ve never seen anything like it,”_ Coran breathed.  That more than anything set off Pidge’s ‘something is wrong’ alarms.  Coran knew _everything_.  Pidge had no idea who the masked individual was, but they were clearly working with the Galra, and that lightning looked nasty. 

“The material is quintessence,” came a metallic voice.  Pidge choked and nearly flipped her laptop onto the floor.  Lance fell over, Hunk shrieked at an honestly impressive pitch, and Rover let out a series of alarm beeps and flashed all its lights rapidly.  They finally all realized that the voice was coming from the sentry that Pidge had been working on.  “Quintessence is the substance with the highest known energy per unit volume in the universe.  Raw quintessence material is transported here from throughout the galaxy and refined into standardized Galra fuel requirements.”

“Well,” Pidge said as Lance and Hunk exclaimed on her success with the bot and Coran hummed to himself about quintessence and discoveries.  “I guess now we know.”

_“I’m going to steal some of this quint-whatever.”_

Pidge resisted the urge to bang her head on the wall.  She wanted to yell at Keith that that was probably a really fucking stupid idea, but she had to focus.  Shiro’s arm was still connected to the ship.  She couldn’t waste any time – the guard was back, and Allura was trying to bluff again.  If they got found out, they were trapped.  Pidge needed to get everything she could out of that ship’s files before they had to run. 

In any other situation, the Garrison Trio would be losing their minds.  They already had a few times, to be honest.  But now the Legs were watching quietly, still and silent to keep from distracting Pidge or anyone else.  The team was spread thin and danger was everywhere.  Lance petted Rover like a cat, and the little drone hovered soundlessly, systems processing everything that was going on, running sequences.  They couldn’t do anything right now, so they would stand in support, waiting until they could help again. 

In a heartbeat, everything went wrong.  Through the comms, an alarm began to blare.  

_“Pidge?!”_

Pidge said a few rude words she’d picked up from reading Galra ship personnel messages.  “Hang on, hang on – I’m–”

 _“Fugitive Prisoner 117-9875 detected”_ said the radio. 

“Oh shit,” Lance muttered. 

“I’m trying, I’m trying–” Pidge swore again, this time in English.  “I can’t – there!”  The beeping through the comms shut off, but it was too late.  Replacing it was the sounds of fighting, and heavy footsteps in metal hallways as Shiro and Allura ran. 

Pidge hissed a few more things that were not to be said around polite company.  “Okay, Shiro, I’ve sent you and Allura a map of the ship you’re on.  The way out is lined in green.  Alternate routes are in black, but they’re slower.”

 _“Got it,”_ Shiro said between breaths.   _“We’re timing it between patrols._ ”  Pidge frowned, but didn’t ask how he knew the timing. 

Okay.  They would make it out just fine.  Now for their other at-risk teammate.  “Keith?  How’s it going?”

She should have guessed. 

* * *

Grabbing the little container of refined purple quintessence had been easy.  It was warm beneath Keith’s hands, even through its glass and his gloves.  The yellow cylinder had been so big, the size of a healing pod or maybe larger.  But now it was all contained in a little thing like a large water bottle, concentrated.  It almost hummed, feeling like he was holding a buzzing insect in a jar.  It kind of made him a little bit nervous. 

Much more nervous-making, though, was the cloaked person.  Keith peered back around the corner to check on their location, and his blood froze.  They were gone. 

Suddenly all of Keith’s hair stood on end.  He spun back around, coming face-to-face with the figure only a breath away.  Their mask looked like a raven’s skull, with eyes that glowed yellow like the cylinders although a much more acidic shade.  They struck out, whiplash-fast, and knocked Keith flying.  He lost his grip on the quintessence, and the cylinder rolled across the floor, clinking lightly. 

Pidge was yelling on the radio, but Keith was laser-focused on the long clawed hand that emerged from the robes, reaching out and picking up the little container of quintessence.  Its skin was gray and withered, reminding Keith a little of pictures of mummies from ancient Egypt.  It looked dead. 

“Okay, plan B,” Keith muttered.  He drew his Bayard, taking reassurance from the flash of heat as it activated and reformed into its blade form.  Maskface turned to face him, yellow eyes burning through the slits in the bonelike white. 

Planning was not Keith’s strong suit.  That was for Pidge.  Pidge wasn’t here though, although he could still hear her shouting in his ear.  Keith’s plan B was mostly just “beat the shit out of this mask guy” and not much more. 

Unfortunately, plan B had not taken into account the fact that Keith’s opponent could teleport.  No matter how fast he ran, no matter how hard he swung his Bayard or tried to read his enemy’s moves, he couldn’t land a hit. 

Then Maskface raised their hands in a familiar form, and Keith had to throw himself to the side to avoid being struck by the massive purple lightning bolts that burst from them.  Thank stars he’d trained with Pidge.  Electricity wasn’t unfamiliar to him, although literal lightning bolts coming straight out of a person’s hands was definitely new.  Pidge was almost as fast as Maskface, and their long hours of practice together was probably one of the reasons why Keith wasn’t dead yet. 

But Maskface _was_ faster, just by a bit.  Faster than Pidge, and faster than Keith.  Also, they could teleport and shoot lightning.  If Keith didn’t finish this soon, he was going to die. 

They were high up now, standing on the pedestal where they’d been throwing lightning into the quintessence earlier.  They were readying another bolt.  Keith couldn’t teleport, and he couldn’t fly.  But he did have a jetpack. 

For a second, he thought he might actually land the hit.  But at the last moment, Maskface threw their hands up and a shield, some kind of energy wall like the one on the castleship flashed into existence, and Keith’s Bayard struck that instead.  It felt like a century that they were both frozen like that, Bayard against barrier.  Then Maskface pushed out, the shield exploding like a bomb, and Keith was sent flying. 

He smashed into the huge yellow quintessence containers with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs.  In the time it took to regain the ability to inhale, Keith suddenly became aware of something much stronger than the generalized pain of being thrown across a room into a wall. 

His hand had been burned.  Maybe it was the lightning that had done it, or the bursting out of Maskface’s shield.  But now it was mottled purple, aching like he’d dipped it in acid. 

He couldn’t even hold his sword. 

Keith’s eyes flicked back up, staring at Maskface as they recharged their lightning.  Now all he could do was run, and that hadn’t worked very well last time.  He got to his feet as fast as he could, swaying slightly, and tried to keep breathing. 

He wasn’t going to win this fight.  “Pidge, I need an extraction now.  Hurry.”

* * *

_“Pidge, I need an extraction now.  Hurry.”_

_“Pidge, fire up the Green Lion, we’re coming in hot!”_

Pidge let out yet another burst of curses.  Practically stabbing at her keyboard with every stroke, she closed the last sequence and the sentry dropped dead and empty, lights dim and internal fans silent.  She slammed her computer shut and leapt up, yanking the cables they would need to keep out without refinement and shoving the mess under her arm. 

“Let’s move,” she said tightly.  Rover sped along at her side, scanning constantly.  Lance and Hunk were right behind her, both with their Bayards up and ready.  They had to pull off two rescues in essentially no time at all, and Pidge was honestly not sure that they could do it. 

They would.  They had to.  

Green was taking off practically before they were even inside.  Pidge flew low and close, nearly clipping the station’s buildings with Green’s paws as they flew as fast as Green could go to where Keith’s signal was, inside a large structure that also held whoever he was fighting.  Pidge didn’t know who it was, but she was betting on that cloaked figure from before.  They’d looked dangerous. 

They reached the building.  No time for carefulness – Pidge smashed her Lion straight through the roof, aiming for just off-center enough from Keith’s signal that she hopefully wouldn’t crush him. 

Through the dust, they could just make out the Red Paladin.  He was kneeling on a narrow arcing piece in the middle of the room, and it looked like the explosion had splashed some of the liquid golden quintessence on him, gleaming like paint on his armor and skin.  Pidge hoped it wouldn’t hurt him, and tried to remember that Allura had healed an entire planet with stuff like that.  The Galra were interested in it, which made Pidge wary, but Allura and Coran had talked about quitessence like it was important and powerful and good. 

Just another thing the Galra were corrupting and destroying. 

For a moment, Keith didn’t move.  He looked like he was looking for something, or someone.  Pidge noticed he was holding his sword in the wrong hand. 

They didn’t have time for this.  Pidge could hear gunfire through her comms – Shiro was still in trouble.  “Get in!” she shouted, her voice carrying through Green’s speakers.  “We gotta go get Shiro and Allura, hurry up!”

Finally, he moved.  The Green Lion drifted down and opened her jaws, and Keith disappeared from the viewscreens into her mouth.  The instant his signal was confirmed to be within the Lion, Pidge was taking off again, this time tearing back the opposite direction, towards where they’d left the ship and Shiro and Allura. 

Keith came into the cockpit as they passed the central control building where they’d been before.  He was looking at his hand with a weird expression on his face, his Bayard stored back in its compartment on his right hip. 

“Whoa, dude–” Lance said, wide-eyed.  “What happened to your arm?”

“What?” Keith looked startled, but then he followed Lance’s stare down to the blackened and melted edge of his vambrace.  The black undersuit beneath it was torn and singed, but his skin was fine, unmarked.  “Oh.  Uh, I must have caught a glancing shot from the lightning or something.  Or maybe the explosion damaged it.  I’m fine.”

Pidge frowned at that – something strong enough to melt Paladin armor definitely should have been noticed, and it was really strange that Keith was unhurt beneath such damage – but Rover did a little scan on the Red Paladin’s forearm and didn’t seem to find anything, so she let it go for now and focused on flying as fast as she could. 

Hunk shook his head.  “You have got to be more careful, man.  What happened to that guy you were fighting, anyway?  You really shouldn’t have gone off like that, who knows how powerful they could be?”

“They disappeared when the Green Lion showed up,” Keith said with a frown.  “I don’t know where they went, or who they were.  But they were strong.  Like, really, really strong.”

“Ugh.” Hunk shuddered, leaning into Lance a little.  “I hope we never see them again.  That was really creepy.”

Keith sighed, leaning over Pidge’s chair to stare at the ship as if he could see Shiro from here.  She watched the little dots moving through the ship’s insides on her scanner and wished the same.  “Me too.”

* * *

Keith meant to tell them about it all, really.  About Maskface, and the quintessence, and his somehow-healed burn.  He wasn’t trying to keep any of it secret.  But first, they needed to get Shiro and Allura back.  After, he would tell them. 

Except that the ship carrying his brother and the princess was already leaving.  Pidge had apparently given up on curses and was just hissing like an angry teakettle as she tried to catch up before it could go into hyperdrive.  But Green wasn’t Red, and they weren’t going to make it.  Hunk was reading out statistics from the scanners, none of them good. 

Keith was pretty sure he was going to permanently disform the back of Pidge’s chair with how hard he was gripping it.  This couldn’t happen.  Shiro couldn’t just disappear, not again.  That ship was going straight into the heart of the Empire, the most dangerous place in the universe.  They knew who Shiro was – the alarm had proven that – and only the stars knew what they would do to him if they got their Champion back, the Champion who was now also a Paladin of Voltron.  It couldn’t happen. 

Keith was helpless to stop it from happening.  His Lion was back on the castle.  All he could do was watch as the ship entered hyperdrive and disappeared before their eyes.  Gone. 

“Look!”  Lance broke the heavy horrified silence, pointing at a tiny speck in the void left behind by the ship’s hyperjump.  It was an escape pod. 

 _Please_. 

Green flew as fast as she could to the pod and swallowed it whole.  The group relaxed – danger gone and team reunited.  Keith could finally breathe again. 

Shiro came in alone. 

Keith grabbed him in a hard hug the moment he entered the cockpit, forcing himself to calm.  _Shiro’s fine.  He’s right here.  He’s safe.  Breathe._  

But nobody followed after him.  No pink armor, no silver-white hair.  No bright blue cheek-marks.  Nothing. 

“Where’s Allura?” Lance asked tentatively after a while of silence. 

Shiro’s eyes were closed.  His body was slumped, like he was carrying something heavy.  When he finally spoke, his voice was so quiet that it barely carried over the sound of the Green Lion’s engines.  “She sacrificed herself to save me.”

Pidge twisted herself fully around in her chair.  “So she’s still on that ship?  The ship that just went into hyperjump?”

“The ship that’s on its way to _the center of Zarkon’s Empire_?” Hunk added, eyes wide. 

“The place that’s way too dangerous for us to attack?” Keith said.  He’d wanted to go, sure, but Shiro had been right.  They weren’t ready.  If a single Maskface could almost kill Keith, they were definitely not at a level to take on the most powerful members of Zarkon’s ruling group. 

“It doesn’t matter how dangerous it is.” Shiro’s voice was tired, but there was something determined in it.  “We can’t let Zarkon get Allura.”  He of all people knew how bad it could be, and he had just been a random Human chosen for the arenas.  What Zarkon would do with one of the last Alteans, Keith didn’t want to find out.  “We don’t have a choice.”

The Green Lion flew back to the castle in silence.  Keith tried to repress the thought, but he couldn’t help but be relieved that if only one of them had to come back, he was glad it was Shiro. 

They would get Allura back.  They had to.  But Keith could focus easier, plan and think and breathe easier, with his brother at his side.  Shiro would keep coming back to him.  And they would make sure that Allura did too, now. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and the final battle begins. 
> 
> not one of my best chapters, but it had to get done. it's another bouncy back-and-forth sort of thing, but i wanted to have pieces of both keith and pidge pov and everything was happening concurrently so i just had to cut it into fragments. keith you dumbass. you went up against a druid alone. that was a Dumb Idea. 
> 
> thanks for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

They returned to the Castle of Lions one fewer member than they had departed.  Coran noticed immediately, and he and Shiro began to argue, voices raised in fear.  Everyone was talking over each other, anxiety and adrenaline high with nowhere to go. 

Pidge immediately went to her chair and began to work.  Rover hovered at her side, booping quietly and running scans through the data acquired at such cost by Shiro and Allura.  Keith watched silently over her shoulder, taking in the tenseness of his Arm partner’s shoulders and the force of her typing.  They finally had some information, but they had lost their Princess. 

Was it worth it?  Keith didn’t know.  That would depend on whether or not they got Allura back.  He wasn’t particularly close to the Altean princess, and he knew that she and Pidge had clashed in the past, but that didn’t mean he wanted to leave her to the Galra.  Nobody deserved that. 

He glanced at his brother, still talking tensely with Coran.  Coran looked worse than Keith had ever seen him, but he couldn’t blame him.  Stars know he’d be just as bad.  (He had been just as bad.)  He didn’t want anyone to feel the way he did, back then.  Coran and Allura had lost so much, they couldn’t lose each other. 

“I got it.” Pidge’s voice was sharp and drew everyone’s attention immediately.  “I have the location of Zarkon’s Central Command.  The plans, too.” She clicked a few more things, and the schematics and coordinates popped up on the main castle screen. 

“It’s huge,” murmured Hunk, staring at the slowly-rotating images with wide eyes. 

“We should go immediately,” said Pidge, eyes never leaving her screen.  “Every minute we wait only gives Zarkon more time to prepare, and leaves Allura with him for longer.”

The others began to argue amongst themselves again.  Hunk was worried about the firepower they would encounter.  Lance wanted to get in, get out, and forget about it. 

Finally, Keith spoke.  “Or maybe we shouldn’t go on this mission at all.”

All eyes turned to stare at him.  He continued, uncomfortable under the heavy gazes but unable to stop himself.  He rarely backed down from a fight, but even he could see that this was a bad idea.  “Think about it.  We would be delivering the universe’s only hope to the universe’s biggest enemy.”

“Yeah,” Lance said sharply, “the enemy that has Princess Allura!  We can’t just leave her there!”

“We need to consider the risks –”

“Keith, that’s cold, even for you,” said Hunk.  He was frowning, looking at Keith like he didn’t know him.  It made Keith feel far more uncomfortable than he would have expected.  “What if it was one of us, out there, captured and waiting?  What if it was me?  You wouldn’t leave me, would you?”  Hunk’s warm brown eyes were suddenly distant, colder.  “Would you?”

_I wouldn’t.  Not if it were Shiro._

Keith’s stomach twisted.  _But Shiro is here.  And even I can see that this is a bad idea._   “I’m not saying I like it,” he said defensively.  He felt like a cornered animal.  The one time he tried to show reason, restraint, and it backfired on him like this.  “I’m just trying to think like a Paladin.”

“No, you're thinking of yourself!” Lance snapped. 

Keith whirled on him, teeth bared, awful words about Lance’s infatuation with the princess blinding him to the danger of this mission on the tip of his tongue.  But Shiro interrupted them.  “Stop it, all of you.  We are getting the princess back, that’s not negotiable.  Now let’s focus.  How are we going to get Allura?”

Well.  He’d tried.  But Keith knew that there had never really been a chance that they would leave her there.  Not after what Shiro had gone through under the control of the Galra.  Not when she was all Coran had left.  She might just be the Princess to Keith, but to somebody else, Shiro might just be the Black Paladin, or the pilot of the Kerberos mission, even if to Keith he was everything.  So even if he wasn’t personally bound to this mission, he understood it.  He could look in Coran’s eyes and see a frenetic energy, a badly-controlled desperation, that he had seen in the mirror for a year, that he had seen every time he looked at Katie

(He still saw it in Pidge even now.  They had a lot of people to save.)

As the others talked and made plans, Pidge spoke quietly to Keith, not looking up from her keyboard.  “We have to get her.  You know we do.”

Keith sighed, wincing when it came out more like a growl.  “I know.  I just… the one time I actually pay attention to danger is when we can’t avoid it.”

Pidge laughed.  “That won’t last.  Soon you’ll be charging into yet another impulsive bad idea, I’m sure of it.”

“Only a matter of time, I guess.”

“You do have quite the track record.”

They were quiet for a while.  Keith watched Pidge type away, each screen totally illegible to him.  He’d never really understood her work, only helped out where he could and followed her instructions.  It was like another language.  Well – this literally _was_ another language, at least two, but the whole thing was foreign to him and probably always would be. 

“There isn’t a choice.” Pidge was so quiet Keith could barely hear her.  Certainly no one else could.  “Just because she isn’t–” She shook her head.  “What if Allura had been the one to come back, and Shiro was still there?  We would never have even hesitated.  That’s why we have to go.”

Keith felt cold at the thought.  “We’re going.” _Everyone is Shiro to someone else._   “We’ll get everyone back, all of them, and then we’ll burn the rest.”

Pidge nodded, eyes unfocused, staring right through her screen to something else (someone else).  “We’ll find them all.  The Empire isn’t taking anyone else, not ever again.”

The rest of the room slowly filtered back in.  “There’s no way we can get in to the main ship without them noticing us and tracking us every step of the way,” Lance said from where he stood near the main computers, staring at the command schematics.  His sniper’s eye scanned the images, turning them and zooming in and out from every angle.  There were no hiding places, not for Voltron or the Lions or the castleship, and it was far too big for the Green Lion’s cloak to make it even under the best of circumstances. 

“We do have another option,” Coran spoke up suddenly.  He explained that the castle contained enough energy for one wormhole – they could get in, but they wouldn’t be able to get back out without Allura to open a new wormhole with her own power. 

That was okay.  They wouldn’t be leaving without her anyway. 

“And into the belly of the beast we go,” Pidge muttered as Coran initiated the wormholing sequence.  Keith couldn’t help but agree.  He just hoped that they made it back out of the beast intact and all together, after all this. 

* * *

So.  It turned out that Zarkon had a solar barrier, and it had now been activated. 

 _“I hope we’ll be able to get back out,”_ Pidge muttered through the comms.  Hunk hummed nervously in agreement. 

There were a lot of ships, but between the sword and the shoulder cannon, things were going surprisingly well.  So it should have been no surprise when it all turned bad. 

It felt like being caught in a mental net – a mental net that had electricity or something in it, it felt like being paralyzed.  Voltron stopped dead in its tracks, frozen, contorted.  Unable to move, barely able to breathe, Keith watched in disbelief as the sword disformed in front of him, leaving the Defender of the Universe unarmed.  Through the static, he could hear Lance shouting, Shiro hissing, Pidge cursing as she hopefully tried to get them out of whatever this was. 

Then Voltron was torn apart. 

The forceful disassembly of the giant robot _hurt_ , like they had actually been bonded physically and then ripped from each other.  Keith gasped, trying to catch his breath as he hunched over in the pilot’s chair, gripping his right shoulder like the pressure could ease the pain.  Someone was whimpering over the comms, pained breathing from both him and others filling his ears. 

It hurt, but there wasn’t time to lick their wounds or try to figure out what had just happened, how they had been so violently removed from one another.  Through the pulsing sudden headache and the sharp bright pain in his arm, Keith tried to focus.  They were in the heart of the enemy, and there was no time to waste. 

He led the charge, the Green Lion small and shining at his side. 

But being in the center of the Empire meant that they were up against more enemies than they had ever had before.  The battlefield was chaos, and it was all Keith could do to keep from being struck down. 

 _“There are too many!”_ panted Hunk.  _“This would be hard with Voltron, but as individual Lions –”_

 _“They’re trying to separate us!”_ Pidge coughed as she took a hit to the shield on Green’s back, breathlessly thanking Lance when he froze solid the ship that had fired on her.  _“Don’t let them drive us apart, it’ll make it that much easier for them to pick us off if we’re alone.”_

This wasn’t looking good.  Then, powerful lasers came out of nowhere, mowing down fighters and warships alike and giving them a moment of breathing room.  _“Coran Attack!”_

The cavalry had arrived. 

With the firepower of the Castle of Lions on their side, things began to stabilize.  It gave Keith just enough time to realize that although he could see the rest of the Body Lions – Yellow headbutting a warship and backing out just in time for it to explode, Blue flashing between fighters, freezing them into solid little space icebergs, Green pressed near a large cannon, too close for them to fire on her and ripping it apart with her powerful jaws – the Black Lion was nowhere to be found. 

He listened hard.  They were all still reeling from the separation of Voltron, but he could recognize the sound of Shiro’s ragged breathing through the comms, and it sounded bad. 

Then the Black Paladin spoke, and Keith’s blood turned to ice.  _“I can’t – something is overriding my controls – my Lion isn’t responding!  I – I can’t –”_

 _No._   “Shiro’s in trouble,” he told the others tightly, already turning his Lion.  “I’m going to him.”

 _“Keith!”_ Lance’s voice was strained, and Keith caught a glimpse of him dodging a swarm of fighters.  _“We need to get the Princess!  We have to stick together, what are you doing?”_  

“Whatever I can.”

No wonder Shiro hadn’t been able to move Black – she was held in some sort of trac-beam projected from Zarkon’s ship, trapped in purple-black light.  As Keith watched, the Lion’s jaws opened, and a tiny figure flew out into space.  Keith’s chest froze, a scream trapped in his throat, but Shiro’s jetpack activated and he flew back to the ship, bouncing hard against the surface.  Keith heard his voice through the radio, describing the damage to his jetpack and telling the others he would meet them at the Princess’s location, but he had to focus.  Shiro would be alright.  Keith had something else he had to do. 

He needed to stop the Black Lion from being retaken by the Galra.  She was empty now, drifting slowy up the trac-beam into the gaping jaws of Zarkon’s central ship.  That was Shiro’s Lion, and nobody else was getting it. 

Red felt the same way.  She never wanted any of her sisters to go through what she had, so many years trapped and locked away, a prisoner of the one who had destroyed everything she knew and loved.  She roared in Keith’s mind, and together they charged. 

There was no time to plan anything detailed, so Keith just bodyslammed Black, knocking the larger Lion out of the grip of the trac-beam and sending her crashing into the surface of the ship where she lay limp and unlit. 

As Keith flew towards the Lion, wondering how in hell he was going to drag her back to the castleship, someone landed beside her.  The figure was too big to be Shiro, and they weren’t wearing Paladin armor. 

“Who’s that?” Keith asked quietly.  He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, a deep base prey instinct to _run,_ to _hide_ surging through him almost overpoweringly.  Didn’t matter who they were – he would fight them for Shiro’s Lion if he had to. 

Coran’s gasp was almost deafening in his ear.  _“Zarkon.”_

Oh.  This was the being who had destroyed Altea, who had taken over the universe.  This was their greatest enemy.  That would explain why he felt so in danger.  

 _“Keith, you have to get out of there_ now _!  Zarkon’s too powerful, you can’t defeat him!”_

“No.”  Keith knew what he had to do.  “This is my chance to put an end to the Galra Empire.  I have to take it!”

Red was just as eager to attack the person who had destroyed everything and kept her prisoner for centuries.  She charged forward, blasting him with a direct hit.  But when the energy dissipated, the Emperor was holding a massive purple energy shield.  The shield faded back into its original form – a form that was very, very familiar. 

The Black Bayard. 

Keith snarled as they charged again.  _That belongs to my brother, you monster.  And you’re going to give it back._  

How Zarkon had a Paladin’s Bayard, he didn’t know.  At this point, he didn’t quite care.  They would figure it out later.  Right now, all that mattered was the fight, the victory.  Red rumbled a deep growl that Keith could feel in his bones.  She had been waiting for this since the fall of Voltron, and she couldn’t wait to make this Galra pay. 

Zarkon twisted his hand, and the Bayard reformed.  But it wasn’t a shield this time – now, he was holding a huge sword with a purple blade.  Keith blinked.  He didn’t know the Bayards could do that.  But there wasn’t time to wonder how Zarkon could use the Bayard, or why it took on different forms. 

The sword was powerful, and it wasn’t just a close-range weapon, Keith realized, blinking the stars out of his eyes.  Some kind of energy blast had hit Red, knocking her back.  They reset and as Red prepared to leap back into the fray, Keith picked up Zarkon’s words through the Lion’s audio. 

_“The Black Lion will finally be returned to its original Paladin.”_

Now what in the seven hells did that mean? 

There was no time to wonder.  The sword reformed into a giant cannon, and Keith was fully occupied with trying to dodge blasts bigger than anything he’d seen from Hunk’s Bayard.  But Coran would not shut up, yelling in a tinny voice into Keith’s ear about how he needed to get out of there, how he couldn’t win and Zarkon was too powerful and –

Keith turned off the comm.  He was going to catch hell about that later, but he couldn’t focus with the Altean shrieking about how he was going to lose.  They were here, they had this chance.  It sounded like Hunk had gotten Allura back, in the moments before he’d shut off his comms.  Keith had to seize this opportunity.  Zarkon was out on his own, dangerous but not backed by his witch or other weapons.  He had to try. 

 _“Keith!”_   The comm made a splintery crackling sound that made Keith jump violently as he dodged another cannon blast.  If he didn’t have the fastest Lion, he would certainly have been killed already. 

“Pidge?” he gasped, rolling Red backwards in another dodge.  “How did you–”

 _“Keith, what the everloving_ fuck _are you doing?!  You’re up against Zarkon?  Alone?  Have you lost your fucking mind??”_

Trust Pidge to be able to override the comms.  “Pidge, I don’t have time for this.  This might be the best chance we’re going to get – I have to take it.”

_“Keith–”_

“Just – trust me, Pidge.  Please.”

 _“I…”_ a sigh, at odds with the laser fire he could hear from wherever she and Green were fighting.  _“Fine.  I trust you.  Try not to die.  Please.  Shiro–”_

The Black Bayard, in a new chainblade form, wrapped around the Red Lion and smashed her down into the surface of the ship.  Keith cried out, body aching from the jarring hit and the damage he could feel that Red had sustained.  The comms were gone. 

Zarkon was approaching, his form tiny compared to the Red Lion’s body but exuding menace like nothing Keith had ever known.  Red wasn’t moving.  Something had been hurt by that last strike, deeply damaged within the Lion.  She couldn’t get up, not even with Keith shouting at her, adrenaline blurring his vision, laser-focused on the Emperor’s approaching form and the purple blade he held in one hand.  _No.  We’re not dying here._  

_We’re not._

_He is._  

The Lion stood.  There was something new, something different –

The railgun’s blast hit Zarkon dead-on, knocking him back.  It hit other structures too, setting off chain explosions and sending fragments of metal spinning through open space, but Keith only had eyes for the armored figure who was already getting back to his feet. 

 _“You fight like a Galra soldier,”_ Zarkon said, his voice deep and menacing through the speakers.  _“But not for long._ ”  The Black Bayard transformed yet again, forming a giant mace.  The railgun had drained Red, and they couldn’t move in time.  The Emperor struck a direct hit, and Keith crashed back down onto the ship again, hearing something break within his Lion as they hit. 

“Come on, come on,” Keith muttered frantically, pressing wildly on the controls.  Red groaned, deep in his mind, but she didn’t move at all, even as Zarkon advanced upon them with his sickening violet blade raised. 

 _I’m going to lose._  

It was a startling revelation.  Shouldn’t have been such a surprise – Keith was a single half-trained Paladin with a single Lion, no matter how fast and talented and powerful they were.  But he’d never really expected that he would lose a fight.  The others were far away, fighting their own battles, and Keith was on his own.  Red was out, and Zarkon was approaching.  There weren’t many ways this could end, and none of them looked good. 

 _Sorry, Pidge.  I’m sorry, Shiro._  

Then the whole world lit up like a lightning strike.  Through the blinding light came a shadow, dwarfing even the Red Lion with her massive size. 

The Black Lion scooped Red up like a cub in her jaws.  Through the damaged, crackly comms came Shiro’s voice, warm and so reassuring after everything that Keith had to squeeze his hands around Red’s dead controls to stop them from shaking.  _“I gotcha, buddy.”_

“Thanks,” Keith whispered back, so quiet he didn’t know if the comms even picked it up at all.  “Thank you, Shiro.”

 _“You got him?”_ Lance sounded strained.  _“Good.  Let’s go, the Princess is back in the castle and we need to get out of here!”_

As the Black Lion flew them back towards the castleship, Keith could see Zarkon standing, uninjured, on the surface of his ship.  This wasn’t a failure, exactly – Keith wasn’t _dead_ – but it sure as hell wasn’t a victory. 

Then he heard Allura, barking commands from where she was presumably back on the bridge and preparing for a wormhole jump.  Something loosened in his chest, something he hadn’t known had been tense in the first place.  He closed his eyes, smiling a little.  No, this mission hadn’t exactly been a sweeping win, but it also was definitely not a loss. 

Black placed Red down on the floor of the hangar as gently as she could.  Red was totally unresponsive, and Keith only got the faintest trace of a growl when he pressed as deep as he could into their bond.  She’d taken too many hits.  This was going to take a lot to fix. 

The Red Lion was seriously damaged, because Keith had tried to take on the ten-thousand-year-old ruler of the Galra Empire on by himself.  Only now, safe in the castleship waiting for Allura to jump them out of there, did Keith begin to realize what the fuck he had just done.  How little he’d thought any of it through.  Zarkon had taken out the entire Altean race, destroyed their planet and torn Voltron apart.  Keith was a teenage Human, not even an adult by his own species’ standards, and he had been the Red Paladin for only a breath compared to how long Zarkon had had to grow undefeatably powerful.  And Keith had just gone head-to-head with him without the faintest trace of a plan besides _fight and win._  

Oh man. 

Pidge had clearly been having the same thoughts.  _“We are going to talk about this later,”_ she hissed through the comms, the Green Lion looking surprisingly menacing considering she was the smallest of all of Voltron.  _“Because I have got some things to say to you, Keith Kogane.  Many things.”_

Keith cringed a little.  Pidge’s wrath was not something to be taken lightly. Admittedly, though, he’d kind of earned it.  Hopefully his not being dead would make her a little gentler.  Hopefully. 

Shiro didn’t say anything at all.  Even through the radio, Keith could tell that his breathing was off.  Had he been injured?  Keith was starting to regret having turned his comms off for most of the fight.  He had no idea what had gone on with the others, with his brother. 

 _“Okay, as soon as we’re out of here, you’re going in a healing pod, Shiro.”_   Apparently, Hunk knew something Keith didn’t.  But Hunk was always worried about something, so he still couldn’t be sure of how bad Shiro was hurt, or what had happened.  Although Shiro’s distinct lack of protest was more than enough of a sign that it wasn’t good. 

 _“Keith too,”_ Pidge said, voice hard.  There was going to be no arguing with her.  If Keith was lucky, she would take out her frustration fixing Red while he was in the pods and wouldn’t skin him alive when he came out. 

 _“And probably Allura,”_ Lance added.  _“Who knows what they did to her in there.”_

 _“Speaking of,”_ Hunk said, a note of anxiety seeping into his voice, _“why are we still here?”_

The castleship hadn’t jumped yet.  They were still sitting right in the heart of Zarkon’s control, all the more vulnerable because the Lions were docked instead of defending. 

 _“It’s the barrier,”_ came Allura’s tense voice.  _“We can’t get out while it’s still up, the wormhole can’t form.”_

 _“Lions, prepare to return to the fight,”_ Coran said, worried.  He knew as well as they did that it would be a fight they couldn’t win.  _“We are attempting to return fire, but we cannot defend ourselves for long and will need to stay protected while we try to find another way out –”_

Without warning, the barrier dissipated, fading into nothingness before their eyes. 

_“Uh, Allura?  What was that?”_

_“Did you short it out somehow?  Coran?”_

_“No…”_ Allura sounded awed, uncertain.  _“It just… it just went away.  Someone must have turned it off.”_

 _“Why would they do that?”_ Pidge was, reasonably, suspicious.  But they didn’t have time to wonder. 

 _“Who knows,”_ Coran muttered.  _“But we shouldn’t look a gift yelmore in the ear.  Princess, prepare for wormhole jump!”_

The wormhole opened, and the castleship entered, fleeing from the heart of the Empire to somewhere far away and significantly less dangerous. 

But something was wrong.  Wormhole jumps were always a little bumpy, but now everything was shaking like they were in an earthquake.  (Spacequake?  Wormquake?  Ugh, Keith had been spending too much time with Lance). 

The shaking grew more and more violent, until it felt that the castle itself was going to come apart at the seams.  The floor rippled beneath them, sending the Red Lion flopping and crashing like a child in an out-of-control bouncy house. 

 _“Paladins!”_  Allura’s cry was filled with fear.  _“Secure yourselves, something is wrong with the wormhole!”_

 _“It’s been hit with something,”_ Coran came through distantly, as if he was further away, trying to fix things somehow. _“The integrity has been compromised, we have completely lost control of the transportation and the destination!  Hang on!”_

Suddenly the hangar doors were ripped open, revealing the swirling emptiness of the wormhole, now laced with purple-black lightning, twisting and buckling.  Tearing itself apart before their eyes. 

Red was still dead to his controls and commands, and so Keith could do nothing to stop himself as she was dragged out into the vacuum of the wormhole.  He could hear Pidge yelping as the littlest Lion slid right out with him, unable to maintain her grip on the floor even with the Lion’s claws fully extended. 

The Black Lion made as if to grab Red, catch her back in the safety of her jaws and drag her back into the hangar to ride out whatever wormhole-storm this was.  But her movements were rough, sloppy like Shiro was drunk at the controls.  Or severely wounded.  She lunged at Red and missed, and was swept out with them.  Lance grabbed for Pidge, trying to snare the Green Lion before she could be lost, but he collided with Yellow who had been trying to do the same, and together they tumbled into the worm tunnel, Green right behind them. 

It was like being in the most horrific storm.  If Keith hadn’t been tightly belted into the pilot’s chair, he would have been turned to jello smashing around the cockpit.  As it were, everything was shaking so violently that he knew he wouldn’t have been able to control Red even if she’d been responsive.  He could do nothing but hold on as his Lion spun and twisted through the worm tunnel.  He caught flashes of color, momentary flickers of the other Lions lost in the storm.  The comms were bursting with static and screaming, but none of them could do anything at all. 

There was a bright dark flash as the Red Lion struck the wall of the worm tunnel and passed through. 

And then – there was nothing. 

They were gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you thank you thank you. 80 pages and over 40 thousand words later, i have finally finished season 1 of this absolutely ridiculous and out-of-control au. 
> 
> heads-up: there is now going to be a monthlong pause while i try to get my act together and plan/write s2 (was literally writing this whole thing week-to-week with no backlog, hence the many late postings), as well as doing a major edit/overhaul of s1 (for the same reasons). so i will be back sometime in mid-december to begin part 2 (same work, as far as i've planned) of Keith & Katie vs. the Universe! 
> 
> this is the first time i’ve actually gone through with writing and posting such a big work. i love hearing from you, no matter how short/long or simple/detailed the review is! i’d love thoughts on anything about this piece, especially in regards to character interactions and original bits vs canon. i’m going to be trying to change things up more moving forward, as this season was mostly just sticking to canon with a few minor changes/focuses/conversations and i feel like i should probably not go through the entire series like that. 
> 
> a quick side thought - i’ve been considering making up a playlist for this fic, and i was wondering if there would be any interest in making it public. no promises, and even if i do you all know by now how bad i am with time so it would be unlikely to be soon, but i thought i’d check. 
> 
> and lastly: once again, i would like to thank every one of you, whether you’ve been following since chapter 1 or just found this fic. this has been incredible and i’m really looking forward to continuing it (and also a little bit terrified. this is definitely the biggest project i’ve ever done, and i keep looking at the “7 seasons” text on netflix and freaking out). but thank you. you’re the reason i’m writing this, and i hope you’ve enjoyed it! 
> 
> i can also be found on [tumblr](https://luoup.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> see you next time!


End file.
